Batik Making

The process of batik making was a bit of a mystery to me before I got to do it myself.  For those of you who have been wondering, here's what we did at the batik workshop... 

Hillary, Erin and I went to the Museum Tekstil in Central Jakarta.  The room was filled with women sitting on stools around gas burners filled with hot wax.  The air was thick with waxy smoke, and the women spoke in hushed voices, if at all.  Remember the Sesame Street song, 'One of these things is not like the other ones...'?  Yeah, we three tall white girls felt a bit like that.

First we chose a pattern we liked from a pile of papers.  The lady who worked there suggested we start with a simple pattern since it was our first time.  We put the pattern on a glass table with a light underneath.  We put our piece of fabric on top of the paper, and traced the pattern with a pencil onto the fabric.  At this point, we were saying, 'This is easy!  This is so fun!  That lady doesn't know what she's talking about, I could have done a waaaaaay more complicated pattern.  I'm awesome at this!'  

Or something like that.

Next we sat on low stools around a gas burner with a pot of hot wax.  We used a tjanting to trace over our pencil designs with hot wax.  The tjanting is like a little pot that you dip into the hot wax, and then the hot wax comes out the little tip at the end.  Every few strokes you need to pour out the hot wax and refill with fresh hot wax.  (Notice how I've been emphasizing the word HOT?...)

 

This.  Is.  Harder.  Than.  It.  Looks.

You have to hold the tjanting at the right angle to make the flow of wax just right.  Otherwise it comes out too fast and thick, or big drops of wax fall onto your fabric (which is why my finished batik has big white splotches...).  When you're done one side, you have to flip it over and trace over your pattern with wax again.  AGAIN.

That's Hillary working on her fancy border.

About this time our tune changed a bit, to something more like, 'This is going to take forever.  I should have done something easier.  How do people DO this?!'

Here's Erin, who ended up with zero splotches...

There's me.  I must have held the tjanting the wrong way because...

... there's my hand, after I spilled hot wax on it.  

This part was not so fun.  I'm not gonna lie.  It hurt.  Bad.  

There's my fabric with the wax done.  Drips and all.

Next, a worker made a border by painting melted paraffin around the edge.

Then we dipped our fabric in a whole slew of sinks and buckets.  I am not sure what everything was, but I think the first was water to solidify the wax, then a tub of something to 'prep' our fabric for the dye, then the dye, then something to 'fix' the dye on the fabric.  We gently squished the paraffin border to give it a crinkly look.

Like our aprons?  

Cute, Hillary!

Then this guy swished our fabric around in a pot of boiling water and flour.  I think this melts the wax off.  Then he rinsed it in fresh water, and hung it on the line to dry.

This was the beginner batik workshop, with just one color.  From what I can gather, for more colors you would repeat that whole process again now, with more tracing, more wax, and more dipping in dye.  

And there is it, in all its perfect imperfection.