If you are looking for a new hobby to do, you have come to the right website. the Arts and Crafts Blog has years and years of posts dedicated to the spread of craftsmaking as both an art and as a hobby. We've already shown readers different craft forms, artists (both classical and contemporary), and even other blogs to help you in your quest for a new crafts hobby.
For this particular post, I would like to introduce you to the art of batik, a process by which textiles and fabrics are printed with designs using "wax-resist" dyeing, in which ink is prevented from seeping to other areas of the cloth through waxing, pasting, or through some other mechanical technique like tying and stitching. The art is pretty well-known in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the rest of East Asia, though it is starting to gain considerable popularity in the West.
In particular, batik harnesses the power of wax to resist ink seeping. Waxes like beeswax and paraffin wax are used and applied to the cloth before dipping in ink. Wherever the wax is applied, the ink fails to penetrate. This is done in batches of waxing, inking, and drying to achieve layering and, hence, the desired design effect.
As for the wax, there are many ways that you can employ to apply it. You may either pour the liquid wax outright, painting the wax on with a brush, or applying it to a pre-carved wire block. Do whatever suits you best.
After the series of waxing, coloring, and drying, the fabric is left to hang and dry. It is then applied with a solvent or ironed out between newspapers to dissolve the wax and reveal the rich colors beneath.
Nowadays, among mass-producers, the old wax-resist technique is not used anymore to come up with the batik designs--primarily because of the time it takes to produce. It make a well hobby for us, however.
