11/05/2016, Hyderabad, India - Batik is a process using ‘resists’ for making designs on a fabric. The conventional Batik process has a resist or a physical block in some form or the other to prevent desired areas on the fabric from being penetrated by dye. Generally wax is used as a resist in Batik.

The block printed areas where resists are in place, come out as un-dyed areas in the dyed fabric and could be coloured differently in repeat wax dye process. This can be repeated several times at the same place or different places with wax-dye process time and again for every subsequent colour change.

Batik can be done with various types of dye & wax on cotton, silk and other natural fabrics. Cotton is easy to work with and generally gives best results. Silk has also been experimented with and to an extent has been successful. Repeated waxing and dyeing over the same place gets newer overlapping results.

The idea in multi-layer colouring is to start with lighter shades of the dye and proceed to deeper ones. Here care is taken that wax resist is neither light nor heavy since lighter would mean possible penetration of dye onto resist area and heavy would mean the wax will not resist properly and could cause patches or dye spreads when removed.

The rarer type of Batik is Pen Batik. Fine designs are made on the fabric using ‘Tjanting’ tools. Molten wax at a certain temperature is carefully put on the design lines with Batik dropper pen. A lot of care has to be taken since too thin a layer could give way to colour dye through surface cracks. Temperature of the wax is normally kept between 200 and 230 degrees.

In the former or conventional method vats or tubs with boiling water are used to melt away the wax. In the latter a small tub with hot water is generally preferred. After the entire resist dyeing process is over, and the wax has melted away in hot water, a neatly dyed plain or designed fabric is available.

There is a special range at Unnati Silks of Batik printed saris and the more special pen Batik sarees that have sarees with simple spread motifs on plain backdrops, to floral arrangements or abstract designs spread across the entire saree on single coloured background or half half saree in dual colour.

Unnati Silk Prints Pvt.Ltd., manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer of genuine handlooms since 1981. Provider of Indian ethnic varieties in sarees, salwar kameez, Kurtas and kurtis, ethnic essentials and special Indo western apparel. Prices are attractive wholesale and retail, dispatch is within 24 hours, free domestic retail, worldwide express shipping.

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