Originally Posted by QKO

There are two types of hand-made fabrics in your typical quilt shop; hand-dyes and batiks.

All of these are hand-dyed, the batiks have an extra step or two added wherein a "chop" is used to imprint a pattern feature onto the fabric using a wax resistor that forms the pattern during hand dyeing. The "chop" is sort of like a big rubber stamp, only it's not rubber. All hand-dyes and batiks are hand-made in usually small cottage-industry type settings.

The Hoffman 1895's are technically hand-dyes, not batiks, as they don't have a "chop" pattern. Think 1960's tie-dyeing and you're pretty close to how they're made.

Batiks are stretched on frames and made a section at a time. They're not screen printed or printed on rotary presses. They do have a hardened "selvedge" edge to allow mounting with pins on frames however. If you look closely at your batik or hand-dye fabric you'll see this hardened "selvedge edge and pinholes where the mounting pins were. Since this edge is used to manually mount the fabric on frames for imprinting, it isn't possible to print a fabric information strip on the fabric like it is with rotary press-printed fabrics. That and the fact that it would be very labor-intensive to do it, without any added benefit to the manufacturer.

To obtain replacement fabric, you'll need both the fabric pattern number and the color number. This is usually expressed in a two part number, example: Hoffman California 1895-42, which would be pattern 1895 and color 42 (primrose).

Since most fabrics only have the pattern number, and not the color number printed on the selvedge edge., you don't have full information there anyway that you can use later in finding more of the fabric. We suggest you keep a notebook showing the full fabric information, maker, pattern number and color number, along with a small sample for each fabric you buy that you would conceivably need more of later.

I guess the answer to your first question, about bleeding, is this; Since making hand-dyes and batiks is a cottage industry, very labor intensive, the investment in pre-washing and/or pre-treating those fabrics would be substantial. The chemicals involved in regular fabric printing to do this on a large-scale basis need special handling and expensive equipment, which your small family cottage industry isn't going to have access to.

Would you be prepared to pay an additional several dollars a yard for batiks and hand-dyes that are prewashed and/or pre-treated to prevent bleed? Or would you rather do it yourself?

Originally Posted by Lori S

I am very familiar with the production methods of batik and hand dyed fabric. Not all the batiks sold are quite so "cottage industry" that measures/techniques can not be used to make the finished product sold to us consumers more "project" ready.
Having gone through a enormous volume of batiks ( as a consumer) and having the high risk of bleed in every single batik.... it just seems that they ( manufactures) have not fully acknoledged that this is an issue. When selecting batiks for a project. I have never had a LQS owner ever even suggest that a batik might bleed and that special care should be taken prior to the use, or in washing.
My question was just is it cost ? do we they really know what the costs could be? have they( the manufactures) explored this issue? have they explored altering the process or dyes ?
I know how they are made now... and the difference in hand dyes vs batik vs water color "batiks". As far as the cost goes , the process is aready cost intensive, materials, labor ect. If the cost is 1/2 of what the consumer pays ( typically) that makes the product cost ruffly $5.00 per yard ( included greige goods , dyes. labor transport etc) Figuring the dyes are labor are represntative of 1/3 the cost ( high side) that makes this part at a cost of $1.65 .... not all the dyes costs and labor would be a complete duplication so use an additional 40 percent ( high) additional cost .. that would make the final cost to the market at a ruff very high estimate of additional .66 cents.. translated to 1.32 additional cost to the final consumer. This is very ruff high estimating, and believe the true additional cost to be lower. Having seen some of the "equipment" used , it is not all that unsuitable for the same or simialiar process we use in a truely small dyeing operation ( ie a yard or two) except on a larger scale.
The current processes used now are far from being Eco - freindly...
The demand for batiks has not diminshed , so treating this segment as fad ( by a manufacture) an being less than diligent in producing a product that has no comsumer flaws( ie bleeding and running), would be something I would think the manufacture would want to improve apon, so I posed the question in my post "why do they not make a batik that will not run or bleed?".
This is really just an inquiring mind really wanting to know!

Originally Posted by Favorite Fabrics

Then you can always count on Hoffman! Every year they have the traditional colors, and then they try an unusual colorway too.

You may also like Robert Kaufman's "Holiday Flourish 4". http://www.robertkaufman.com/fabrics...ng_collections We did order quite a few of these for our shop. Last year, "Holiday Flourish 3" was our best-selling holiday group.

Originally Posted by JoAnnGC

Yes, my question is this...Why is it that when I find a fabric collection that I really love I can hardly ever find a shop either online or brick and mortar that carries the complete collection... Some shops only picked up the panels and a few of the coordinating fabrics, some the opposite.