Five Playdate

Three of the FIVE got together this weekend and  played with a faux batik method using soy wax and textile paints.  Beth has a tutorial for the technique on her blog.  She is in love with the technique and I must say, with see-through fabric, I adore it too, but love is a bit more restrained when it comes to heavier weight fabrics.

Let me show  you first the see-through piece.  Isn't it fabulous? And believe me, it is even  better in person.

The other batiks are a bit muddy  looking to me.  Perhaps it is because I started out with a light blue dupioni silk.  Perhaps I am just not comfortable with my mark yet.  Margaret said it took her  a while to get comfortable with the marks she made--kinda like gettting used to the sound of your voice on a recorder or the picture someone takes of  you.  And perhaps I just need more skill at mixing marks and colors.  Anyway, here are the pictures. 

This one is of the back of the fabric.  I did not take a picture of the front.  Every paint I used in the 4 layes was a metallic.  The front is so reflective it just hurts my eyes.  Lesson learned--one layer of metallic is glittery (good) but all layers of metallic is reflective (bad).

 This one has only  one layer of metalllic paint and I like the sheen much better.  The marks...well that is another story.  The blue squiggles you see are the original color of the fabric  perserved by soy wax.

 In this fabric there is a huge difference between the front and the back--we were using paints rather than dyes.  I folded the fabric so you could see the difference.  I didn't do that for the fabric above because the paints were more watered down so the front and the back are much more similar.  Another lesson learned.  I don't think there is necessarily a right and wrong on this lesson--it would all depend on the effect you wanted.  Another lesson I learned with this is that working with that orginial blue by staying in the same color family works better than trying to make it turn green or purple like I did in the previous pieces.

 These last two pictures are just details of the front and the back.  I  like this fabric. The marks on it are less distinct and blend better for me.  I like that.