At Lovequilting.com, we love batiks and we stock mainly Hoffman
batiks. This is because we find Hoffman
batiks to be of the highest quality, richest colors, bleed less and portray
wonderful designs.
The official definition of batik, a noun, is a technique of hand-dyeing
fabrics by using wax as a dye repellent to cover parts of a design, dyeing the
uncovered fabric with a color or colors, and dissolving the wax in boiling
water.
The designs we often see on batiks is achieved through the use of metal
plates with wooden handles that are used to place the hot wax onto the
fabric. Then the fabric is submerged
into a dye bath. The fabric under the
wax resists the dye and remains the color is was before the dye bath. Hot water is used to remove the wax from the
fabric. The fabric is then dried in the
tropical sun with assistance from the trade winds of Bali.
As we see multiple colors on these lovely batiks, the above
described process is repeated as many times as necessary.
Even today, most of the beautiful batiks we use in our projects
are created by hand.
Another unique feature of batik fabrics is that they are the same
front and back. If you have ever
experienced that “oops” moment when you were supposed to be sewing right sides
together and realized you had wrong sides together or right side to wrong side,
this won’t be an issue with batiks because right side and wrong side are the
same!
I hope this gives you a renewed appreciation for batiks. If you haven’t used batiks in your projects,
I encourage you to give them a try, they’re fabulous to work with!
I used to think that a project done in batiks needed to be done
completely in batiks and a project done in screen prints, needed to be done
completely in screen prints. Recently, I
tried mixing batiks with screen prints, and I am very pleased with the result.
#batiks #batikfabric #fabric #quilting #handdye #lovequilting
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