HOW TO MAKE BATIK  THE AMBLESIDE WAY!
 

Batik is a method of decorating fabric and has been used for centuries in Indonesia. With melted wax a design is applied to the cloth, cotton or silk are best, it is then dipped in dye the areas covered by wax do not receive the dye.

Here at Ambleside we had limited resources and this is the way we produced our batik pictures.

Materials

  • Pencil

  • Paper

  • Felt tips

  • White Fabric

  • White candles

  • Sauce pan

  • School cooker
  • Six coloured dyes
  • Old paint brushes
  • Hair dryer
  • Iron
  • Kitchen roll
Our theme was for Easter cards and we started by drawing our design onto paper, we did not put small details on the picture as these are difficult to reproduce in batik. We then outlined our design with a strong coloured felt tip pen,this makes it clearer and we were then able to trace the picture through onto the fabric.

If any part of our picture was to be white we had to wax this first, we then chose a pale coloured dye for our first dip, we applied this with a brush and then dried it with the hair dryer. Then using an old paintbrush we waxed the part of our picture which would stay that colour,

We continued to dip, dry and wax until we had built up our batik, when we had finished we ironed the fabric between sheets of kitchen roll to remove the excess wax and then we applied the finer details, whiskers, eyes,and mouth with felt tip pens.

We mounted our work in a card and entered them in the Ambleside Horticultural Society's annual Flower Show.

This article was written by Melanie, Rosie and Daniel.

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