More Batik & the Technique of Reverse-Thinking

Purchased in Indonesia, I wore this sarong
quite a bit--now it's part of a bedspread!

So here are some examples of batik, the wax-resist art mostly associated with Indonesia, though we have some African & Dutch examples too.  The first (top) is from Indonesia & is fairly simple.  Essentially you go in reverse...the white is the original color of the fabric, so start thinking in reverse...and start planning! 

Wax is then painted on (or stamped, or even printed, as in the top example), and everything covered in wax stays white, while the artist dyes the next color.  For the two color items, it seems fairly easy...but what about the multi-color fabric?  Thinking in reverse is not one of my strong suits.  Nor is planning!  

These two examples, one hand-drawn, one stamped or printed, are great examples of traditional indigo batik.

Dutch wax-resist, purchased in Muscat.  Also
part of the same bedspread.

This last example, though, was purchased in Java, and is a great example of the Javanese batik technique, which is often multi-colored and extremely detailed.  

Here's a longer (17 minute) video, from Moda Batiks in Indonesia, which does a nice job of demonstrating tie-dye techniques, using a copper stamp, sprinkling salt on the fabric to set the dye, etc.  

The "salt effect" mentioned at 9:45 is, I believe, a difference between soaking the fabric in salty water vs. sprinkling salt.  Soaking the fabric would set all color, whereas the sprinkling/salt effect, along with the sun, means that only part of the color is set, while the sun bleaches out the fabric that didn't get the salt sprinkling.  I hope that makes sense!  

The planning (or ability to think in reverse) is what fascinates me...I'm sure it's easier the more you do it, but I find so often in my sewing that my reverse-thinking needs work!  

Indigo Batik - from the Vault!

On the left, below, is the sarong I mostly wore during our 2 months bumming around Indonesia in 1995.  For visits to all shrines and some performances (shadow puppets, kecak dance, traditional dance), a button down shirt & sarong & sash were required for both the Roommate & I.  

I believe it was made with a stamp?  Or a printer?  Is there a printer that dispenses hot wax?  I should look into that.  The pattern is very regular overall.  


Anyway, the fabric on the right is some less-precise batik, which looks totally hand-drawn by someone with a tjanting tool.  The design is fairly regular, but not perfect.  I bought 2 of these sarongs, and later had them made into a bedspread, which got quite faded in Oman...even with the curtains closed!  (Just a LOT of light there.)  

The link for tjanting will take you to Dharma Trading, where you may want to have a look at some of the batik stamps, too, just to get an idea of how those work.  

Batik is one of those techniques that is very difficult for me to think about...because the artist must keep preserving the lighter color with wax, then dying it darker & darker & darker.  With 2 colors, it's not so difficult (though there is so much white on the first batik, above...what kind of stamp was that?)...however, it's sort of like relief carving...you have to take away the air, and leave the thing you want the carving to show.  It all seems sort of reverse and counter-intuitive to me!  

Hope you enjoy seeing these; I'll show some more batik, from India, Africa & Java soon.

More fabric stamps

BTW, I'm not including the bread stamps (from Tibet) or the wallpaper stamps (from the Czech Republic). See my first post about fabric stamps here.

In the first photo, a detail of the 2nd, you'll see 2 small border stamps.  The left is only a few inches long, about 1.5" wide and the other is about 5" long.  I'm guessing they would have been used at the border of a piece of fabric.

In the next photo, which includes stamps from both Iran & India, you'll see another border stamp (at the top), along with a pair of triangular stamps, which fit together. (As always, clicking on the photo will give you the largest version available.)  They are from Iran, and I'm guess part of a 4 stamp set (as explained in the last post), but we've only got 2.  To the right of the photo you can see 4 more triangular stamps, and you can even make out the paint on one of them; I'm guessing it was the red stamp!  Again, these amazing, intricately carved pieces would be stamped on fabric, in succession to (slowly) create a 4 color printing process.  Not only is the carving painstaking, but it must be hard for the person stamping to get things lined up just right, too.

In Abu Dhabi, where we bought the stamps from Iran, it was a bit of a coup among the Western expats to get a <b>complete</b> set!  Which makes sense--stamps were probably often retired/thrown out because one was no longer in good shape--so the rejects came to the Iranian souq near my house--meaning few complete sets made the journey across the Persian/Arabian Gulf.  We did manage to get 3 complete sets, I think.  Which demonstrates a) that we lived close to the waterfront where the souq was located and b) that we probably spent a lot of time/$$ there!  ;-)

The fabric they are laying on is a bedspread from Jaipur.  It is batiked (wax resist), and I'm sure a stamp was used for this intricate design that repeats and repeats over a huge queen-sized bedspread without flaw.  Which is another interesting way to think about fabric stamps--not as adding color, but as preventing additional color to be added!

Yukata! - In which I decide I need a dress form...

So, I finished it.  Again, I need to reiterate how pleased I am about how well the batik (blue) goes w/ the Japanese poet print.  You can see from the photo at right how messy my house is...NO! you can see that it is really a boxy Japanese kimono pattern, modified a bit to hopefully be a bit more flattering.  However, there is so much bulk under the arms, at the side seams.  I do like the final result & will wear it a lot (it's so loose that I can wear my pajamas underneath it easily)...but, I may try to think of a way to take in the side seams to reduce some of said bulk.

I need to mention though, that kimono are not meant to be shaped, the pieces are rectangles made to efficiently use the narrow woven fabric.  When we lived in Japan, one of my students was studying tea ceremony (the Japanese make everything an art & it always involves lots of study & practice)...and she had to wear a kimono.  She told me that her kimono hated her!  This student, Akiko, was a normal female shape, but she said that when you wear kimono, you have to have no shape.  "Like the trunk of a tree," was how Akiko put it!  Which surprised me, but if you think about it, she's correct (look at some photos from Kyoto, if you need more evidence).  Which again brings me to the question of why I thought I would get a shapely housecoat if I copied a kimono pattern?  Oh well...it was a fun project.

A reminder, a yukata is a kimono, but made from cotton, not silk or wool.  It's a summer kimono, essentially.  If you've ever spent a summer in hot, muggy, Japan, you know why they invented this version of the kimono!

Here's the back--you can see I added some darts in the back to give it some shape.  I also added them in the front, but they don't show much because of the overlap.

Under the arm, where the
sleeve (R) is attached

I had to look at the Roommate's yukata to figure out how to do the underarms.  Attaching the sleeves was easy enough--just lots of straight line sewing, but after sewing up that little flap at the bottom of the sleeve, there's actually a gap in the fabric.  I top-stitched that to make it lay smooth & look nice.

I tried it on w/ my hapi coat belt, but the Roommate & I didn't think it looked very good, so I decided to make tie fasteners.  There are 4 of them, and I'm also quite pleased with them--I made them by folding the fabric 4 times and sewing a few times--so they are rather sturdy & flat--and I think they make nice little knots.  2 are inside, where they don't show, so that the overlap stays put.

One thing I kept coming up against over & over was how to fix it while it was on me.  The Roommate is extremely helpful & willing to do most anything w/ regards to textiles & sewing, but he doesn't always "get" what I'm talking about.  I really feel like a tailor's dummy, or dress form, or adjustable mannequin is the next item I want for my sewing room.  I may have to wait a while--we have to pay for our new south wing, first! The duct tape version is looking better and better!

Another issue...of course I don't have any matching pajamas!  Uh oh.  I do have some great stretchy fabric that sort of matches, maybe I'll make some pants out of that. 

Not OK Kimono!

Okay, we can all have a little think about What was I thinking? now.   Here's what's up: I did translate most of the kimono pattern into English; at least I did enough so I could use it to make myself another yukata.  And I could have used the measurements in the pattern (it's in centimeters), but for some dumb reason I decided to use the old measurements for my hapi coat.  Which was big & boxy.  I realize that the kimono would have been boxy, too, but narrow boxes, not wide boxes.  Why did I do that?  Now I have a voluminous housecoat that doesn't really look good when I wrap a belt around it.  It looks so bad, in fact, that NO!  You cannot see a picture!

I am however quite pleased with my fabric choices, so I'll post a picture of it so far so you can admire that:

Bella is always eager to assist me! 

I decided I need darts (not exactly a Nobel prize winning decision, I realize), and googled sewing darts and one of the first pages I found was Saraicat's! She did a guest post at Sew Mama Sew about darts, so I'm going to use her information & see if I can add some shape to this box.  I was pleased because I follow her tweets fairly closely (and get hunger pangs at the food-related tweets).

I am also glad that I have the Roommate's yukata to look at; the Japanese pattern book I'm using doesn't have instructions (and I probably couldn't translate them if it did), so I have referred to it many times so far.  The biggest deal is how the sleeves connect to the sides under the arms.  Nothing like what we do in the west for most armholes.  I'll show some photos once I get that figured out...

Other stuff I've made: Quilts

West African Fabric Shop

I'm always raving about West African textiles & the roommate's & my 5-week shopping trip there...here are some quilts to show you what I made.  I bought a lot of fabric, and haven't made much of a dent in it, so plan to use more for dresses, shirts for the roommate, etc...

The first quilt (they are smallish 6' x 4' or so each) is called West African Fabric shop and shows nice orderly rows of fabric, one each of every kind I bought!  A friend in Dubai machine-quilted them for me.

The Anarchy of the African Market

The second quilt is titled The Anarchy of the African Market.  We like markets and find that they are a good place to observe the local people just being people, not selling things to tourists, or performing in any way.  We like to walk around a good market for a long time.  But the markets in Africa are pretty chaotic, to say the least, and really, downright scary.  (This doesn't include the much smaller, much harder-to-get-to markets of Goram Goram, Burkina Faso, or in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, which were fun, friendly, not crowded and very interesting--though not if you were looking for tourist treasure.)  So this 2nd quilt tries to reflect that anarchy and explains why I ended up not buying much fabric at the markets!  And mostly why we skedaddled after 20-30 minutes...we did try to go a few times, in Ouagadougou, in Accra, in Lame, and in Tamale, in northern Ghana, but never lasted a half hour--scary!  Jammed so tight you knew you were a target for robbery (I get nervous about this anywhere in the world), and also, it was pretty easy to lose each other!  Yikes.

This last one is a table cloth, and it sort of quilted itself, because as I sewed each strip on, I sewed it to the backing, then I just put the binding on.  Hope you like seeing these.  Comments? Questions?

Here's a mix of classic highlife music to get you in the mood.  I'd recommend looking for a classic highlife (50s-60s) CD online, or at the library, to get a better taste of this amazing music.

BTW, concerts such as Youssou n'Dour are great for checking out amazing African textiles (mostly West African prints & bogolan). The audience really dresses up & it's fun to see the mix of traditional and modern styles.  To give you an idea, the quilt pictured here is made from the 80 lbs of printed fabric & woven textiles we brought back from our trip there. Another fun aspect is the audience is not shy about dancing!  Although the music is so amazing, I don't think many people could stand still.