Today we drove into Denpasar, the capital city of Bali. You never quite know which town you are in as they all seem to blend together. We went to Barb's friend Benny's batik factory. There we stamped our own 5 metres of batik fabric with chops.
Here is some material that is being dyed a brown colour.
Notice that the fabric has been scrunched up, then the dye is added.
Any places where the dye pools (near the bottom on the table) the colour will be darker.
This is what gives batiks that mottled look.
Chops are stamps made out of copper strips pieced together to make a stamp that will transfer wax to the fabric. Chops are very intricate to make, each one taking about 80 hours to complete. Benny has one person employed full time to make chops for his batik factory.
The area of the fabric that is chopped with wax will resist the dye. My fabric was brown batik to start with. Then I chose my two chops. Sy, the wax chop worker, did most of the chopping for me. It looks very easy, but when it was my turn, I realized how difficult it was. I managed to get a lot of wax drips on the piece of fabric I chopped.
Then the fabric is dyed another colour, darker than the original colour, and left to sit for one hour. The workers sponged our fabric with black dye. After that the dyed fabric will heat set by putting the fabric in boiling water. This also removes the wax, which then reveals the pattern with the colour underneath.
I can hardly wait to see my completed chunk of fabric. We will get our 5 metre piece in two days. The fabric will be completed and treated with a conditioner that keeps the fabric from fading.
I am sorry to tell you that for some reason my photos are not downloading to the blog successfully. I have some wonderful pictures to go with the info in the blog and will try to figure out the problem asap. Technology!! Where is the 11 year old computer geek when you need him/her?!
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