not sure if this would go here but here is where it is.
I was at my mom's today after church for lunch and had to show her bob1414's stash of Batiks and she about passed out and then she told me that she used to make Batiks. This got me thinking, how hard would it be to make our own and has anyone else on this board make Batiks from scratch. I think that it would be fun, like tye dyeing.
my mom is extremely wired. but we love her anyways. she is an artist and has done just about every kind of odd ball crafty artsy thing out there except quilting. but she would be a great quilter. she loves color and fabric. she tries to collect fabric but she uses it for projects and then ends up losing it. :lol: :XD: :-(

I'm watching this one!

I had a go in a very small way at a one day workshop, but it seemed quite hard to produce a half yard length, what with heating wax, drawing designs on the fabric, dyeing the said fabric, perhaps more than once, then the (for me) tedious part of trying to remove the wax.

I don't think it would be hard to do but you would have to have room & the time to do it. Sounds very interesting though.It would definetly be fun. I myself though would rather buy it so I didn't have the mess & it wouldn't take my time from sewing & quilting.
It would be a great project though for some people.

wow, will follow this topic

It's not hard to do, but it *is* time consuming. It would be best done in a studio that you could kinda have things close at hand most of the time. When I did it, I had to clean up the kitchen table every afternoon before dinner! Crazy!

We did it back in the 60's and it is quite popular with many art quilters. The soy wax resists are much more user friendly than the paraffin resists and way easier to remove from the fabric. There's a great how-to article in the current (June/July) issue of Quilting Arts magazine.

You can have fun making fake batik using a Clorox bleach pen. We have done that with our girl scouts with some fantastic results!

Batik is lovely to make, but challenging because you use melted wax.
After one bad burn, I stopped teaching it in a crowded classroom.
Now, there are cool wax products and resist pastes. You need vats of dye and an earth-friendly way to dispose of the used dyes and wax. I'm sure you can do a lot of research online. Making yardage might be fun, might be boring. I am Queen of Tie Dye (38 years of teaching middle school art). Dip dying , marbling, etc, is easier. True batik is ART .

The Chlorox Bleach pen! Use it to sign & date your quilt?
Maybe on the back?