What do you get when you mix tea dying with wax? Apparently batik.
Dorrie did some batik-ing back in her elementary days. “We made purses.” she said.
“What did the boys make?” I asked, since I am always that difficult friend.
“Man purses.” she said. After a pause, “Well, they gave it to their moms or whatever!”
Had those poor boys known that can batik any fabric they want, we may have more enthusiastic male fabric printers in this world. You know, or not.
Box wine was left over from last week. I suppose to vary the cocktail (and to go with the hot weather) we could have made white wine spritzers but I’ll leave that to you club soda fans.
Dorrie brought home a bag-o-white t-shirts and we were in business.
Materials:
Tea, different kinds to make different colors
Bowls (we had three colors so three different bowls)
Wax, melted
A method to pour the wax (we tried measuring spoons, turkey basters, bottles, and skewers)
Butter knife
Masking tape or apparently water soluble glue (this is not Elmers but something else, Dorrie found this shortcut on a craft site, more on it in a bit)
Fabric (in our case, a t-shirt)
Cocktail of the Day: Box white wine, or if you want something different, white wine spritzer
1. Brew some tea, keeping the seperate tea colors in different bowls. We did pink tea (pomegranite and passionfruit), yellow tea (lemon), and black tea (um, with black tea).
2. Melt wax in a double boiler or double boiler-like situation.
3. While tea is brewing and wax is melting, make yourself a cocktail and start planning your t-shirt design. If you are stuck, look to the internet for inspiration.
4. Dunk the shirt in a the tea color. Let soak a bit. The longer you soak it, the deeper the color should be. This will be your shirt’s base color. If you want your base color to be white, skip this step.
5. Wherever you melt your wax will keep the dye away from that part of your shirt. We tried a variety of methods to pour the melted wax with some fun results. As Sam says, once you get that layer of hot wax on your finger, it won’t hurt anymore!
6. Let the wax dry. Don’t get impatient like Nicole or the wax design will crack off. Seriously.
7. Dip the shirt again in the tea if you want a deeper color. If you still want a deeper color, leave it soaking overnight à la Dorrie.
8. Wring out your t-shirt (or tea shirt, ha!). Let dry overnight.
Tea is allegedly quite the powerful little dye. Will let you know after we wash our shirts.
Overall, not the high quality textiles we see in countries that have mastered batiking but hey, it’s Too Cute Tuesday. This is supposed to be fun. And the end result is at the very least a non-white fruity smelling t-shirt.
Aren’t we crafty?