Batiking Silk Scarves with Faye Jones

On Saturday, Oct 17th, three of us gathered at Faye's home studio for a silk batik scarf workshop.  Faye ordered the scarves from Dharma Trading Co and prewashed them so they were ready for dyeing.

Now it was decision time...we first had to choose the color for under-dyeing our scarves. This color would determine the color of the shapes in the end.  The dye powder was mixed with a little water and added to the dye bath with a citric acid mix.  We wrung the excess dye from the scarves and microwaved them to set the dye.  The scarves were then rinsed and dried.

Kira, Paige and Jill with our scarves after the first dyeing

On to the soy wax resist...Faye had many shapes from which to choose like ceramic discs, cookie cutters and other found objects.  The soy wax was melted and kept hot in an electric skillet and other small dishes with mug warmers.  We first practiced on newsprint to get the feel of using the stamps and then applied the soy wax to our scarves.  Kira also used a tjanting tool and drew lines connecting her flowers.

Batiking workstation - you can see where we practiced waxing on newsprint

               Kira applying wax with tjanting                    Kira and Jill applying wax with Faye in the background

Scarves drying after wax had been applied

Once the wax dried, we painted our scarves with a thickened final dye keeping newsprint under the scarves to catch excess dye.  In the next step, we rolled up the scarves along with the newsprint, placed them in a plastic bag and microwaved once more.  The newsprint adsorbed the excess soy wax during the microwaving process.  We then discarded the paper and rinsed our scarves in water removing the excess dye and wax.

Paige applying the final dye

We gave the scarves a final wash in hot water with textile detergent and a rinse with the softener and hung them to dry.

While our scarves were soaking, we ate lunch.  Not only is Faye a talented artist, she is was wonderful cook.  We had turkey noodle soup, bread and cookies, all delicious.

Jill with her beautiful scarf

Kira's beautiful scarf

Faye gave us additional tips and hands-on instruction with other dyeing and stamping mediums.

It was a fun-filled day and we cannot thank Faye enough for her workshop.  Faye encouraged us to see ourselves artists.  After seeing our finished scarves, we truly are artists thanks to Faye!

Faye plans to have a spring batik scarf workshop for those who were not able to attend this workshop.

Parting shot...a rare selfie with one of my scarves