Untitled, Part 2

Untitled, Part 2

In the entire project, this is easily the most relaxing and contemplative step, adding the wax. Notice the pencil lines in the top of the photo? This is a first for me.  I know how big I want the finished piece to be, so I am using the pencil lines to make sure I have enough room around the motif to accomplish the task.  The pencil lines will eventually disappear throughout the process, but as long as the stamped square is basically in the middle, I am good!

This is my wax pot, an electric skillet.  It is set on the lowest setting, just enough heat to melt the wax. I love seeing the reflection of the window on the surface!  Here is my stamping tool, a piece of a cardboard rectangular box, that when stamped produces a square.  I have used it on many, many projects with this motif.

After stamping the squares, I add circles to the centers. Then repeat, a lot. 

Here is a shot of "one page".  It has 56 motifs stamped in wax and held in place on a wooden frame with giant thumb tacks. I will need 20 more of these for my project, but I am going to add some extras, just in case anything goes wrong, for a total of 22 pages of little stamped squares and circles. And, all of this intense and beautiful color! Most of it will disappear in the next step, where I remove the dye from everything that is not stamped in wax. Only the waxed designs will keep their color.  

Here are a few of my previous projects with this motif.

Urban Dwellers

Cookie Cutter Condos

Windows

Untitled, as of yet...

Untitled, as of yet....

This project began 2 years ago. And I am finding that writing about it is equally as daunting as making it. And, I didn't want to write about it until I knew it could be done. This one was taking a risk, and on a large scale.

It started as a concept, which I will get to at a later post. For now, it was all about....

The math.

It wasn't hard, except that I kept getting lost in the 3 dimensions and overthinking it.  If I could have realized the simplicity of the system, I think I could have gotten there.  So, I went to my go-to, my son. I explained the project and he immediately knew how to do it.  So, not only did he calculate the numbers for me, he also explained his reasoning, succinctly, and then it all made sense.  But the number he calculated was so large, it was almost unbelievable. I was going to need over 1200 little quilted blocks to make this thing! Nuts!!

That is a lot of fabric. And, a lot of fabric to dye. I was easily able to extract the numbers for each section of the project into yardage. I decided to use pieces that would easily fit on my batik frames. And, I had a roll of plain white fabric 58" wide to use up, so I was good to go.  I made sure to include room for error and have some excess between all the pieces and enough to attach to the frames.

These are the photos after the first cold water rinse, hanging on the line.  They will still need to be washed with soap and hot water in the washing machine.  

The dyeing:  I measured the dye, the soda ash, and water, and mixed in the blender. Then I put my wet and wrung out fabric in a bucket and poured the dye mix on top. Wearing gloves, I scrunched the fabric around a lot in the dye mixture until the fabric was completely coated. The fabric is squeezed lightly to remove the excess dye and carefully placed inside a ziploc plastic baggie.  Then the bags are set in the sun.  I usually flip them every hour or so, and leave them in the bags until the next day.

With a lot of colors and cleanup between each one, it is a lot of work. And, I did it in the summer because the dyes work better at warmer temperatures.  These are from the summer of 2022.

And, keep in mind, the next step is the batik, and most of the color you see here will be removed with a bleach discharge step after the batik...