Making Batik

A few weeks ago I was able to go to a neighboring community and make some batik fabric.  Esther is a seamstress here in Accra.  She also makes a lot of her own batik fabric in back of her home.    We were able to learn how they do it and make some of our own.

This is where the batik is made.  It was quite rainy and gloomy that day.  

Inside the building are many foam blocks of the forms you use to stamp the patterns on. 

You can see many of the patterns she has made to choose from.  It was very hard to decide on which ones to use. 

Yes, there was even a BYU stamp.  Esther is LDS and caters to the senior missionaries.

We start with a white piece of cloth.  Ours were only done with one color because it was so rainy that it would take too long for the color to dry and then add another color.  

You then dip your block into hot wax and place it on the fabric.  This wax protects the fabric from the dye and makes the pattern.  Here are two videos of a couple of my friends working on their fabric.  We all made tablecloths.  You can hear the African radio station playing in the background. The lighting was quite poor so it was hard to get good pictures inside but you can get the idea. 

This is the bowl of hot wax that the foam blocks are dipped in.

Here are a couple of pieces of fabric that are part way stamped with the wax.  The wax is a pretty gold color but, of course, that doesn't stay on the fabric when it is finished.

The water is for dying and rinsing the fabric is heated over wood fires in the big barrels.  

These are the pots the fabric is dyed in.  Most of us chose the blue color but one chose pink.

The fabric is put into the pots and dyed.

It is laid out to dry for a short time.  

Then the fabric is dipped in very hot water and rinsed, followed by scrubbing the wax off in another container. 

The finished product is laid out to dry one last time.

One lady who was there and wasn't with our group made a beautiful tablecloth.  Here are some pictures in it's various stages.

The cloth with only the wax on it.

Drying the first time, with the wax still on it.  You can see that the wax has absorbed some of the color.

The finished product.  The wax is gone, so the white shines through.

It was nice to just take a girls' morning and go do something different.  I have always wondered how that fabric was made.  Some day, when it's not the rainy season, we will go back and do it with several shades or colors.  Maybe some fabric to make a skirt?  

Sister Emfield