Faulty Bali Batik
 

Just a warning to everyone - check your fabrics, preferably before you buy them but at least before you get ready to use them. I bought a bunch of lovely Bali batiks at the 50% off sale at Fabric Depot in Portland on Super Bowl Sunday. I just got ready to wash them in Retayne, and the first one I opened up had two clusters of holes in it! Fortunately, all of the others were perfect, and trust me - I checked! This is in no way a complaint against Fabric Depot, one of my all time favorite fabric stores. I have no doubt that they will replace or refund my money next time I go there (and this means I have to make another trip - right?) The "funny" thing is that the areas with holes are both on the same side of the center line, so the holes couldn't be slashes that occurred while the fabric was on the bolt. If you look carefully, the edges of the holes appear to be brown, as if the fabric were burned. (No one at my home smokes, but anyway the fabric was all in its plastic shopping bag until I took it out to wash it.) Any idea what could cause this? I'm thinking maybe something in the manufacturing process?

Perhaps the wax they use was too hot????

Those definately look like burn marks. I could have happened because the water temp was not high enough to remove any/all of the waxy resist and then a cold water rinse would have globbed up any remaining heavy resist, these could have ignited in the drying process.
An interesting issue! I will check my batiks very carefully. Thanks for the heads up on this issue.

Thanks for the heads up. I will certainly check before buying.

I would say somebody was smoking in the factory and the ash fell off their cig. I visited a Batik factory in Bali a few years ago, the men mostly work with material from start to finish and they are very heavy smokers. No OHAS over there.

yuck! Another reason to wash fabric before using.

They sure do look like they were burned. But I do love the fabrics.

Probabyly in the manufacturing, I had this happen to me with a fat quarter set I purchased

They look like burns to me too but not cigarette burns. Cigarette burns are usually round and these holes have jagged edges, especially the larger one. The only way they would burn oblong like that is if someone did it on purpose (held the fabric vertically so it would burn upward--but they look like burns nevertheless...