Tie Dye done right (none of this 80's t-shirt business)

Batik Tie and Dye!

Along with soap, one of the skills trainings that REP holds is batik tie and dye. Though I have come at an unfortunate time for project funding, I am fortunate that my host mother is a poster-woman for REP in a way. From her, I learned and gained great insight on soap making, about being an entrepreneur, and now on batik tie and dye!
The soap was pretty fun, but the batik tie and dye is so much fun! Tedious in its own way, but I like the creativity of it and the excitement of how it will turn out…like a kid at camp eager to see how your tie-dyed underwear would look after you took the string off, except it actually looks amazing! I’ll take you through some of the major steps of Batik tie and dye, and then just tie and dye.

1. Gather materials…needed: white cloth, dye, stamps, wax, creativity, hydro (sodium hydrosulphite…I think? Every time we use a sketchy chemical I have to laugh…how the chemistry teachers of my past would cringe!)
2. melt the wax and stencil out the plan
3. start stamping…this will hold these patterns as white
4. prepare the dye
5. soak the sucker in the dye
6. put it out to dry
7. the next stamp will hold this lovely orange colour.
8. then you can dye it again, and that will be the final background colour

materials for stamping for the Batik

melting the wax
planning for the design
first wax stampmixing the dye

dying the material

second stampthe final product!

Tie and dye is easier…in a way. If you buy the cloth pre-tied, then the dying is just a fun experiment (in my opinion). But, as Rabi aspires to, to be able to tie the cloth yourself is the best, and she hopes to learn. from how tedious it was to untie the cloth, I imagine its not so fun to do the tying, but I’m sure it is more economical.
There is dying and washing and then snipping open the ties, there definitely is an art to it, like all these things, it looks easy, but I am sure if I were to do it it would manage to be ugly! My tie dye always was!

material all tied up

after dying, cutting ties

finished product!