[EXPERIENCE] : Learn to Craft Batik with My Own Hands

Hello gorgeous, welcome back! Fulfilling my thirst (and yours) about fashion, now I'm about to share my learning experience. Learning never ends, and you can always learn from everyone around you, right? Learning is not always for first timer, it can be your second or third time doing the same stuff, to increase your skill and knowledge. 

Now, I'm doing batik crafting activity at Sogan Batik, which actually I've ever done before. My grand father was an owner of a batik factory, but then closed down due to some problems. Ended up fulfilling my thirst at another batik factory and learned to create "batik tulis" with my own hands, right across my house. It was not easy at all, getting hot wax on my hands while focusing on drawing at the same time. But it was all worth it, since I'm all happy doing it. 

At sogan, I'm doing the same stuff. The difference is, when I'm crafting batik as a child I did it like from zero, picking the fabric and texture, drawing with pencil for the pattern with my own hands, and last drawing with the wax. As for now, I'm only drawing with the wax to make the path clear and not colored with the dye. It still feels super fun and exciting to be done. 

I visited Sogan after lunch time, and got a chance to took some photos first with my friends while some of us doing their afternoon prayer. We asked to sit onto the mini stove where they warmed up the wax to create pattern on the fabric. Since I'm a bit fat and it's kinda hard to sit onto such a small chair.... So I decided to sit just on the floor to make it easier and of course, more comfortable. We started off with sharing the newspaper as the base (to prevent getting hot wax on our hands, it hurts if you haven't done it before), and of course the drawn fabric. Me myself getting a simple design with flower pattern. FYI, we're creating a batik handkerchief, super cute, right? Without further do, I do the batik drawing right away. I miss that much of having hot wax onto my hands, and didn't even realized that I smiled during drawing with wax. 

After finished with drawing with wax, then we continue visiting the coloring station. It was the place where all of our batik fabric being dipped into colored-water to dye and then into hot water to get rid of the wax. The process of creating the color is pretty complex, I can say. The staff need to measure some kind of dyeing powder (yes you have to do some mix max just like laboratory man to get the exact color that you want) and strangely the powder color is not the color we want to. What I mean is.... When we want the color to be blue and red the color used is not it, they're putting together some white and yellow powder then voila! You get the color. OK this is hard to be explained and to be absorbed so let's just consider that the point is they're using coloring powder. 

It took a while to boil the water and other preparation, after that they put our handkerchief into the water. Since it was too hot inside I decided to sit with mommy inside my car #LOL spoiled baby. Then we continue visiting the shop of Sogan Batik where you can see clothes and fabric handmade by them. Meanwhile, we're waiting for the fabric to be dry under the sun #summerdetected. Well, from the shop price, I can say this is pretty affordable for handcrafted batik. As they're pricing around IDR 300.000 for a piece of batik. For you who love batik you might want to buy some, for your own collection or as a gift to your loved ones. I'm comparing the price to shops in Jakarta. The quality still needs to be improved (on sewing quality, they need some kind of deeper training about this) but overall if you'll just wear this onto a daily life then it's okay. Sorry for being sensitive but as a fashionpreneur and batik addict, well that's what I can say. 

That's all for my fun and exciting experience for learning batik crafting for the day at Sogan Batik Yogyakarta, thanks for reading this article and shared the fun with me! I'll see you girls on my next posts!