Indonesia Inspired Batik Project

Batik is the art of making images on fabric and it is so important in Indonesia that they have a National Holiday celebrating it: October 2nd. UNESCO recognizes batik as a world heritage of humanity. Wax is melted and than used in a special tube pen to draw on fabric, or metal images are dipped in wax and stamped onto fabric. The wax acts as a stop out when the fabric is being dyed.  I had large blocks of wax for my students to feel, but we didn't want to mess with trying to keep it at the right temperature all day for a week, much less worry about burns on hot plates, so we went even more low tech: Glue.

Some of my students with no vision opted to use stencils, rather than try to make a free-hand drawing. The trick with this is to use a sponge brush, dip it in Elmer's glue, and then dab up and down, rather than making strokes that might go under the edges of the stencils. Getting enough glue on the fabric is also important.

Other students drew pictures or patterns with the bottle of glue. The fabric was transparent enough to trace marker drawings on a light box, but some choose to just wing it.

The next day, when the glue was dry, students painted their images with acrylic. I think it worked best when they worked within the lines, but if the glue was thick enough to start with, it was OK to cover the entire thing in a couple of colors. The underside of the fabric, generally maintained the stop out. The paint has to dry completely before trying to rinse the fabric, for obvious reasons.

Day three, is when we soaked the entire piece for at least 5-10 minutes in water before rubbing and rinsing the rest of the glue out.

There was a little magic in the reveal, that their original lines never left, they were just covered and then revealed.

a low vision student uses a digital magnifier to paint his glue spirals with spring colors

 

Batik Project

 From Tapa cloth in the South Pacific Islands, to West African Kente cloth, to Indonesian Batik. Our textile unit was taking us all around the world and teaching us about different techniques and cultures. Most batik in Indonesia is made in Java, and the process is very long and fascinating. There are lots of videos on Youtube to walk you through the process. Images are drawn on fabric with hot wax to use as a stop out. Or metal stamps are dipped in wax to print repeated patterns onto fabric. Then the fabric is dyed and the wax stop out remains white (or the pre-wax dyed fabric color). In some cases, the fabric is bleached and the wax protects the colors that it covers. There are a lot of options for a lot of outcomes, but the premise is one of wax resist.

Our class used Elmer's glue with varying results. So much of the liquid watercolor came out when the glue was being washed away, even though it dried. So we went back with fabric dye. Probably the best results were drawing with glue, painting the outlined shapes with diluted acrylic and then rinsing the glue out once all the colors were dry and set. (This is what was done with the turtle image above). Occasionally, the student would choose to not rinse the glue at all, so that it could remain tactile. In any case, it was fun to explore how fabric can be used to make art, and to think about how so much of what we wear is being dyed by real artisans on the other side of the globe.