Name: Misty

Message: I had created a batik waaaay back in high school and as I remember, we actually painted a picture with dye on the fabric, then coated areas in wax, crackled it, then dipped the whole thing into very dark dye to give it an old, weathered look.  

I'm wanting to give it a try again.  This time, I'd like to try do make wearables, and I absolutely love your boys' shirts!  The question I have is how do you make the mottled, or swirley blend of two different colors on the shirts?  I am assuming you are not dipping the entire garment into dye???  I would like to use teal and purples or blues, but I don't want just one big blotch of the same color all over the shirt.  

Your help would sincerely be appreciated!  Thanks so much!

What I like to do is wax a design onto the prewashed white shirt, using batik wax (a blend of beeswax and paraffin) that I have heated in an electric skillet to 230°F. Afterwards, I let the wax solidify (and most likely come back another day), then I follow the usual recipe for tie-dyeing, only without the tying. I soak the shirt in soda ash for five minutes (you don't want to leave it in the soda ash too long), then gently squeeze out extra liquid and lay the shirt flat on my work surface. Finally I squirt the different colors of fiber reactive dye directly onto the shirt, wherever I want them. In general, I tend to end up with pale colors where the wax is, rather than perfect white.

Some sources refer to this technique as "faux batik", because you can get multi-colored results while using only a single round of waxing, in place of the repeated cycles of dyeing and waxing that are required for multi-colored results in traditional batik. The technique you used in school could be described as faux batik, too, since it gives the effect of batik when dye painting is the source of the multi-colored design. You could also combine the two methods, if you like.

I strongly recommend that you choose a good dye. Don't use an all-purpose dye such as Rit dye or DEKA-L dye. Instead, use a cool water fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye. This might be the kind of dye you used before. It works great with wax because it can be used with cool water that will not soften the wax. Procion MX dye is set with soda ash, instead of with boiling hot water. The results are far more resistant to fading and washing out that any brand of all-purpose dye.

Any good tie-dye kit will work (look in your local crafts store for a kit made by Jacquard, Dylon, Rainbow Rock, or Tulip), or you can mail-order exactly the colors you want. There are ten or twenty different Procion MX dye colors, plus a hundred more colors that are mixtures of two or more Procion MX dyes. You can buy your favorite colors, or you can buy the mixing primary colors and learn to mix your own.

For more details, please see "How to Batik".

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