How to use wax to dye fabric

For getting crinkle pattern among tie-dyeing,  we usually crumple fabric and fix by thread. The pattern size and shape are up to the nature of fabrics. The thin fabric can make fine pattern but it's really difficult to get the perfect cracking even though the crumpling is so elaborate. Then, using wax can be the solution to get more elaborate and detail cracking rather than using the thread.
I would like to show the precess of cracking using wax in this posting. I tested with Silk Dupioni Organza but the cotton can be idealistic for doing this process.

Cracking dyeing with red color on white fabric.

Made red cracking on the fabric dyed yellow color.

Process to dye with wax

The paraffin or wax could be used and I did use soywax. The soywax can be removed easily by water so I didn't need to use chemicals for removing wax. But soywax was not removed perfectly, too. The remaining was need to be absorbed to the oilpaper. Then, let me explain the precess shortly.

1. First of all, boil wax or wax to be melted and apply it to the whole fabric prepared for cracking using a brush.

2. For making red cracking on the yellow basis then dye the fabric with yellow color and then apply the soywax on the fabric. I have used the yellow fabric which is dyed with gardenia.

3. When the soywax is dried completely, crumple by hands like the photo below. Do crumple when we crumple paper. The left one is for red cracking on yellow basis like explained above, the right one is for red cracking on white basis.

4. Put the crumpled fabric into the dyeing solution. The cracking pattern is made when the dyeing solution percolate to the gaps which have made by hand crumpling to chip off the soywax.



5. Soywax needs to be removed in boiling water after dyeing. I've used silk so couldn't put it in extremely hot water that caused the soywax wasn't removed perfectly, but the cotton can remove the soywax by boiling water. Then I used oilpaper, put the fabric between oilpaper and did ironing so that the remaining soywax can be absorbed into the oilpaper.

I've done this precess for the test of elaborate cracking on Silk Dupioni Organza but when I do Batik work, normally I use cotton. I think cotton is more suitable fabric to this work that can remove the soywax ideally. But if you use a see-through fabric like silk organza  in a small work, you may get gorgeous hand dyed fabric which is useful for interior props like lightings.