After a ‘Welcome Back’ from our summer break from Dee, followed by the notices, Sandie introduced our tutor for the day.
Tori (Victoria) Riley learned the technique of batik whilst living in Indonesia as a child and teenager.
Tori (Victoria) Riley learned the technique of batik whilst living in Indonesia as a child and teenager.
She showed us the equipment we were to use: basically a wax melting pot, the types of wax and the tjanting/chanting. Tori then explained the technique, demonstrating how to hold our fabric on the hand and the tjanting like a pencil. After drawing lines and patterns onto our fabric with pencil we were left to have a go.
Those of us who had never tried batik before began with several unintentional blobs of wax at first, soon we got the hang of the technique.
The morning was spent experimenting with different designs.
It was soon lunchtime and we enjoyed a break to catch up with each other and find out about what we had done during the summer break.
The afternoon began with Tori explaining about the special batik dyes, which we applied with brushes. Using recycled breakfast cereal bags under our designs to protect our table tops, we enjoyed filling in our designs.
The fabric has to dry before we remove the wax but Tori explained how to do this by layering up a towel, greaseproof paper, kitchen towel, the batik piece, more kitchen towel, greaseproof paper and an old tea towel and then ironing over the layers. She suggested we begin by using a warm iron and increase the heat as required to melt out the wax. The paper towel may need to be changed several times to ensure all the wax has been ironed out. It is possible to boil the wax out, but the batik dye needs to be fixed before carrying this out.
Carolynne led the vote of thanks to Tori for a very experimental and enjoyable day.
The morning was spent experimenting with different designs.
It was soon lunchtime and we enjoyed a break to catch up with each other and find out about what we had done during the summer break.
The afternoon began with Tori explaining about the special batik dyes, which we applied with brushes. Using recycled breakfast cereal bags under our designs to protect our table tops, we enjoyed filling in our designs.
The fabric has to dry before we remove the wax but Tori explained how to do this by layering up a towel, greaseproof paper, kitchen towel, the batik piece, more kitchen towel, greaseproof paper and an old tea towel and then ironing over the layers. She suggested we begin by using a warm iron and increase the heat as required to melt out the wax. The paper towel may need to be changed several times to ensure all the wax has been ironed out. It is possible to boil the wax out, but the batik dye needs to be fixed before carrying this out.
Carolynne led the vote of thanks to Tori for a very experimental and enjoyable day.
Meanwhile throughout the day Sylvia manned the shop, Stephanie the library and Liz the treasurer’s desk. Some members worked on their own projects and many thanks to Tracey for cutting out fabric ready for the ‘Savick Bunting Project’.
| Margaret gave an update from the Samaritans regarding our ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ project. Many of the Samaritan volunteers had told her how lovely our piece is and after particularly difficult phone calls, they look up from their desks and enjoy and really appreciate the embroidery. A very good start to our year. A.R. |  |
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