Coloring a batik with indigo
My friend Bu Dalmini was recently here in San Francisco to give hands on batik making demonstrations at the Indonesian Consulate residence, Wisma Indonesia, and at the San Francisco Tribal Art and Textile Show. She worked on the same cloth, a kain panjang or hip wrapper with the a long bean motif. She very kindly gave it to me.
The waxed cloth has a charm of it’s own. The darker yellow wax is older. It gets darker as it stays in the pot.
Here you can see the bunches of long beans hanging down from the vine and leaves.
The color palette will be monochromatic, with various shades of indigo from light to dark, along with the sharp contrast of the white.
After several dips in the indigo bath the blue looks about just right for the first color. Some of the coor will be removed by the wax removal process after all of the dyeing is finished when the whole cloth is immersed in a large pot of boiling water with tapioca starch flour.
In the next step, all of the beans and some of the leaves will be covered to preserve this lightest blue.
More photos of the next step will be added soon.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!