Weekend Play

I had a great time this weekend playing with soy wax...but before I get into that, I want to follow up to what I did earlier in the week with the last of the potato dextrin resist. Here's the photo of the dried paste. After painting it with dyes and letting it batch, the result was that there was hardly any patterning on the fabric at all. I think the resist was too thick for the dye to penetrate the fabric, although it looked like it did on the back of the fabric when I dyed it. So, I'm thinking there's a limit to how thick you can smear this stuff on and still get cracked lines. I'll use potato dextrin applied thinner for fine lines in the future.

Okay, onto the batik. The piece at top had been dyed previously. After waxing (the larger light areas), I overprinted with thickened dye using a roller that has felt dots glued onto it. That's how I got the smaller dot areas.

This piece was printed with black dye over a waxed screen.

This piece and the one just below were my "blotting sheets" under the primary piece being waxed. So each one had two or three different waxed pieces on top. Originally I tried using a plastic sheet under the piece being waxed, as recommended by one of the surface design "masters," but I found that created a lot of mess scraping the wax off the plastic. With fabric underneath, it's like getting something for nothing! I may or may not rewax one or the other of these.


This one was predyed, then waxed using an old egg beater as a stamp. I'll likely do another layer or two on this piece.

This piece had wax brushed on it.

Wax and discharge paste on a previously dyed piece.

And this piece is my favorite of the bunch. Previously dyed, wax brushed on the fabric with corrugated cardboard underneath the fabric. Then discharged.

I'm loving soy wax batik. The only thing I haven't gotten it to do satisfactorily is the typical batik crackle. Soy wax is quite pliable, compared with the original paraffin or paraffin/beeswax batik waxes, and it's harder to get it to crack. I ever tried putting a piece in the freezer for a couple hours, but that didn't work well. If anybody reading here has tried to crackle with soy wax and been successful at it, please let me know how you did it!

I've spent so much time on surface design recently that the quilting projects are stacking up. Although I've got a couple pieces in process -- including one piece that's been partially quilted -- I have a 10x10" kitty portrait I'll be making first this week, for a special project.