White Batik
 

I am planning on making a Wedding Star quilt out of Batiks. I want the melon or centre to be white. Has anyone ever used the plain Batik fabric used for dying in a quilt? I don't want to dye it, I am just wondering want color of white it is.

The rings are going to be a purple and turquoise/aqua down to a creamy white and turquoise/agua
in it. So I need my background to be the correct white. I have all the fabric for the rings and the star part I just need the back ground.

I had though of using a white tone on tone 100% cotton but that may not work as the cotton and the batiks would not have the same shrinkage factors.

Trish at the Quilting Bee is ordering me in a bunch of fabric that are mainly white but they are on back order until September and I want to get going on this before than. I quess I will have to get her to order in the white for dying.

I looked for white batik for a long time for a quilt I am making and I have given up on a really white one. The ones I found were pinkish or bluish. I am using one regular fabric in my quilt and hope that it will be OK.

My suggestion is that you pre wash each of the batiks (separately) and treat them with Retayne...I think that is the name. It keeps them from bleeding. I found a big difference in the fabrics and how they bleed....they all lost some dye.

Most PFD fabrics are bleached so that they are optically white in order to keep the subsequent dyed colors true. I can't imagine that the PFD batik is any different. (PFD batik is really a misnomer since it isn't batik until after it's dyed. Batik is the process, not the cloth itself.)

in my opinion it is not batik unless it has color. I have a complete color chart from Hoffman 1895 Bali Waterolors and all of the very light ones have a bit of tint in them No pure white.
You might write a company such as Hoffman and ask if they make one,

I had a batik that had such light color to it that it was almost white. I had to hold it up to light to see the very faint markings on it. They showed well enough when it was wet, but when it was dry it was very faint. There was some overall color to it ... a very light cream.

I've seen some recently in LQS that are very light, but none recently that were as light as the one I had. I've only got scraps left otherwise I'd offer it to you.

As Hollis and Ghostrider pointed out, there is no such thing as a "plain batik". Batik is a dye process, not a fabric. The fabrik used however is slightly different than most quilting cottons as it has a higher thread count. You might check with fabric stores that carry a variety of quality fabrics to see if they have a white in a high thread count that has the same "hand" as a batik.

You also said you wanted the same fabric so the shrinkage factor would be the same. I presume you are not pre-washing? If not ... have you considered pre-washing and drying - that way neither of them will shrink after pieced/quilted (and if you use a cotton batting, the batting if not pre-washed/dried WILL shrink and give you that "crinkled" look if that is what you are looking for).

Hoffman is now selling a 220 thread count bleached white PFD cotton lawn that is being hyped as the same base fabric they use for their batiks. I believe that is what the OP is talking about. It is not batik until it's dyed, as has been said, and will have no pattern/design whatsoever. IMO, it will simply look like a plain white sheet, very boring.
http://softexpressions.com/software/fabrics/PDF.php

this is true, I have a bolt of the "batik" made for dying and it is nothing more than a tightly woven fabric made to BATIK dye/paint. Any other fabric that is a "white" batik will have, yellow, blue, brown, etc in it so that you can see it is "batiked". which is really just painted with dye and salt, no real batiking method is used in making those!

If you find a tonal you like, wash it good, as you do the batiks. If each is good quality, you won't have much if any shrinkage.

Batik
 

You are right, about a batik being dyed, but it is also boiled to remove the wax. I think this is part of the process that makes the weave so tight. So even if you buy the same fabric before it is dyed it still won't be just like the batiks.

Most batiks are printed on a fabric that is very tight to start with. The shrinkage is only about 3%.