Batik

The day after Christmas, Jenna and I were taught batik by Mrs Ann. Jenna went to a batik factory in the Caribbean and told me how cool it was. Once she saw there was a class, we decided we had to check it out! Mrs Ann came to pick us up from the Eagle House. Once we got there we had some coffee and croissants, then got to work. The first thing we did was practice drawing designs on stretched out fabric with hot wax, a 50:50 mixture of paraffin and beeswax.

Next we picked our fabric and traced a design. Unfortunately I did not take any photos of this step.

After tracing the design with a pencil, we moved on to tracing with wax. On the table to the left of Mrs Ann, you can see the tools that we used to hold the wax and dispense it onto the fabric. It is a copper container attached to a wooden handle.

After waiting for the wax to cool, the next step is painting! This was by far my favorite part :)

My batik painting is the elephant on the left. At this point, I am getting ready to do the crack technique.  This involves heating up paraffin only and painting it over the parts I want technique to take place. I painted it along the background of the elephant and then scrunched up the fabric. Jenna is helping to speed up drying her painting. Joy, on the far right, is fixing her batik painting.

Then the fixing agent is applied to the entire painting to ensure the colors will no fade. After the fixing agent is dry all that is left is washing the fabric in hot water.

Here is Jenna doing exactly that.

The finished product!

So colorful and beautiful!

A big thanks to Mrs Ann of the Chiang Mai Batik School! We had such a great time learning batik from you! You are awesome! Keep up the great work :) Jenna, I am so glad you saw this in one of the many folders of activities to do in Ciang Mai at the Eagle House.