Holy cow, I didn’t think I’d batik until baby E. was at least eight or nine years old! But I took her to day care so I could work a half day on my ‘vacation’ (uhm, yeah, self employment, gotta love it.) So after ‘work’ was done, I decided to batik a pair of rayon pants that have been aging in my batik box for at least six years (maybe more). Here they are!
I used a stick of leftover wood that hubs had in his scrap bins from woodworking, about 3/4″ in diameter. Dipped it in the wax. The crackle came because I did a quick ‘cold dip’ of the garment before dyeing – so the dye would crackle like that. Normally you use warmish water to dye, but the cold dip beforehand does a great job on the crackle. I also boiled it out (actually poured boiling water over the waxed area, into a bucket so the wax didn’t run into my drain or sink) so there was no post-dye ironing, and no halo. I will have to do this again. Made myself some mother’s milk tea while I was at it, LOL.
I also have a white dress of the same rayon, but decided to leave that white. I wasn’t going to get to both. And at some point, when I get something on that white dress, I’ll need to batik and dye it to cover it up! This dress is a shaped button front fit-and-flare long dress that was inspired by a Caymanian shop window from 1996!
Last week I finished sewing a nursing sundress. Yahoo! This cries out to be in a wild summer floral too, but hey, I had the linen (and it’s all about the stash, baby.) So here it is, Elizabeth Lee Nursing Classics 307. I omitted the sleeves, lengthened it into a dress, as she shows in one of her online pages and voila! With EL designs you have to measure yourself and go with that, because they are generously sized patterns! I sewed this in a 4-6. It’s very cute, just above my knees. I wore it with tall espadrille peep toe wedges. mmm. yummy.
