Fuel for the Cycles

With all of those cycles, they also need fuel. Instead of gas stations all over the place, we would see these liter bottles (half full) of gas on wooden stands along the roads so people could refuel. Many times these would be located by a roadside fruit or vegetable stand or close to another business.

Taking the Bus Up the Mountain

We were certainly glad that we were riding and not driving up the narrow roads that went up into the mountains. Our guide told us that the rule of the road is: the biggest vehicle has the right of way. We spent most of our time riding in a bus that went down the center of the road. You see, ours was the BIGGEST vehicle.

The driver would toot his horn and the traffic in both directions would move to the edge of the road and let us go down the center. Boy, were we glad that we weren't driving!

And you can see in this photo that most of the traffic is motorcycles. There are 3 million people living on the island of Bali...and there are 2.4 million motorcycles. The whole family would be riding on one motorcycle - we saw a family of 5 on one cycle - mom, dad, and three small children. They use their motorcycles for transporting all kinds of things. See how these two cycles have carriers on the back for transporting goods.

The Batik Studio Shop

This is the shop at the Batik Studio. These wooden cases were just beautiful and made a great backdrop for the batiked pieces, sarongs, shirts and dresses they had for sale there.

The pieces you see on the right side (orange fabric) are stamped batik fabrics. The more expensive silk one were in the cabinet.

Flower Design on Bonnie's Shirt

And this is the flower design the artists drew on Bonnie's shirt.
I'm going to use my Paintstiks to paint over them so we can wash out the wax.

Rooster Design on Wayne's Shirt

The artists even waxed some designs on our shirts.

This is Wayne's rooster. You are pretty good when you can just draw with the canting tool and no lines. The young man who drew this was one of the artists who draws the designs on the fabric.

Ta Dah! My Finished Batik!

Now I could tell you that those white dots were planned...but my parents taught me to never tell a lie.

It will be fun to embellish this piece and make is a nice souvenir of our trip to the Batik Studio.

Boiling out the Wax

Our batiked pieces were dropped into a boiling tub. This piece was just fished out of the water and the wax is now all gone.

Dyeing our Batik Masterpieces

After the waxing was complete, the men in the studio took our fabric and mix it in the dye pot. They mixed up powdered dye that looked like what we purchase from Pro Chemical or Dharma.

We even got to pick out a color - mine is purple.

Bonnie Trying Her Hand at Batiking

Here I am spreading wax on my floral design. This was definitely harder than it looks. The artists in the studio made it look so easy -- NOT.

Batik Stamp

Some of the batiks are made using a stamp like this one. Again, these were less expensive to purchase than those that were hand waxed.

Batik Design Drawn on Fabric

The design starts with the pattern being drawn onto fabric. We watched a young man doing the drawing. This design would have many different colors in it.

The Canting Tool

Look at the fine tip on this tool. They could spread such a fine line of wax. For the more expensive pieces they would wax both sides of the cloth so it would be the same on both sides.

Some of the less expensive pieces (like those that the street vendors were selling) we very obviously only waxed on one side. Less work, less expensive. More about the street vendors later...

In the Batik Studio

It was amazing to watch the artistry of these women (and men) handling the canting tool full of hot beeswax. The pieces they were working on had many different colors on them.

They also added paint to some of their work. I'll have to photograph the piece that I bought that has gold paint on it...later.

Visiting the Batiking Studio

We had two opportunitiesto visit the batiking studio. The first visit was to see the process and visit the shop - of course, we all had to buy some batiks. I purchased some sarongs, a batiked bedspread, and some batiked zippered bags. The artists are very talented and placed that wax just where they wanted it.

Then we went back another day and sat down with the artists who had prepared a design for each of us, and we used the canting tool to spread the beeswax on our own design. I told my lady that she didn't have to worry about losing her job! I think she was more impressed with the feathered designs that I drew on the practice piece than the work I did on the floral design. It's really hard to keep from dropping dots of wax onto the fabric - in places that you don't want it. After the design was waxed, we took it to another area where it was dyed and the wax was boiled out of it. It will be fun to embellish and quilt my piece as a memory of our batiking adventure.

One of the fun things that we did on our trip to Bali was the Elephant Safari. This was Wayne's favorite. This is our group - we had 28 quilters, Kaye England, Jim West, Wayne, and me. If you remember the song Elephant Walk, well that is exactly the pace that we traveled through the rainforest...lit was step, rock, step, rock. I guess those big pachyderms need that rock in their step to move that mass. You definitely just had to sit back and enjoy the ride because we were going nowhere fast. One of our ladies dropped her camera and the guide stopped the elephant, he picked up all three pieces of the camera and handed it up to them. Now that was a photo op that we missed!