Which is better, printed Batik or hand painted Batik?

Is printed Batik really Batik?

Was looking in Nancy's Notions catalogue where she had both kinds. So I was wondering about it.

nancy's notions mostly carries Kaufman batiks which are very good.

i think the meaning of "handprinted" on her site refers to the wax tool used to create the design.

these designs are hand stamped onto the fabric with wax to create the resist.

here's a link so you can see the types of tools i'm talking about.

http://www.dharmatrading.com/html/en...ps_copper.html

but if the batik says its from Kaufman i would feel comfortable buying it and whether you choose a pattern batik or a more solid type color is up to your personal tastes.

Thanks

OK, here we go -- batiks 101.

A lot of people call anything that is hand-dyed in Indonesia or India, where most of them are made, a batik.

Technically though, there are two types of fabric commonly called batiks -- hand-dyes, and batiks.

Both are hand-dyed fabrics. A hand-dye stops with the hand-dyeing and will typically be a mottled or "tye-dyed" fabric with no imprinted pattern.

A batik has extra steps wherein the fabric is imprinted using one or more "chops" which are used to imprint a design or designs on the fabric with wax before the fabric is dyed, or between dyeing steps. These are sometimes called "hand-paints" or "hand-prints" or "hand-printed" depending on the manufacturer.

So, all batiks are also hand-dyes, but not all hand-dyes are batiks.

Typically though, many if not most people call all hand-dyes and batiks with the general term "batik" even though it isn't technically correct to call a fabric that hasn't been imprinted with chops a batik.

Confused enough? :mrgreen:

Thank you for the 101. I know very little about Batiks.

Thanks for the information. All I know is they are all beautiful no matter how they are made. It was interesting to see how they stamped them with the wax.
Sue