Batiking with Home Made Stamps

I got all 8 points of the lone star done yesterday as planned, but now I've got to figure out how to piece together the background fabric.  I am going to applique in the background, so I've got to do that work before I finish the piecing.  So...that means I am going to be blogging about other stuff in the meantime.

I decided to try batiking.  I LOVE batiking!  I absolutely love it!  I used Malka Dubrawsky's new book, Color Your Cloth, as a guide, and spent the afternoon playing with soy wax and some home made stamps.

I went to Michael's and found a few wood stamps that were on sale for $.29.  You gotta love it!  Jay glued a small piece of wood to the back of each stamp as a handle.  

Wood Shapes made into stamps.  I also bought a bag of paper doll holders- I had no idea what they were,  except I thought I could make some shapes with the circles.  They worked great too.  Jay used wood glue, which held up well.

I also found a bunch of small cookie cutters at an antique shop while in Berkeley Springs, WV last week.  I used a potato to make stamps with a few of the shapes.  

The key when working with vegetables is you have to have patience for the veggie to heat up in the wax before it can used.  If the veggie isn't warm enough, the wax just makes a seal over it and you can't stamp.

My potato stamp and the cookie cutter

Stamping flowers with my potato stamp on red fabric

I started with some of my solid hand-dyed fabrics and stamped out a pattern with soy wax.  I decided to go with soy wax as opposed to batik wax for 1 main reason:  soy wax easily comes off the fabric in hot water and doesn't require boiling in a stock pot for 45 minutes.

Here is some of the fabric I made today with the wax still on

I love this exclamation point stamp

I'm not sure what to call this shape, but I like it!

After waxing, I discharged the red and turquoise pieces.  I'm going to cut the fabric into small squares and make a placemat and/or drink coaster.

The turquoise discharged to a very pretty aqua and the red turned orange.

I discharged and over-dyed the navy, light green, and orange pieces.  I don't have a picture of those yet, since they're still hanging out in the dye bath.