Japanese stab binding
Welcome to our Japanese stab binding page to accompany our notebook making kit that has been designed exclusively for Cosy Craft Club by Calamity Katie Designs! You'll find our video demonstration, tips and inspriation. Enjoy!
What is batik?
Batik is a traditional Indonesian craft, which uses wax and dye to create patterns and designs on fabric. The wax is heated and applied to the fabric, using stamps or hand drawing. Once the wax has cooled, the fabric is dyed or painted. It is then heated so that the wax melts away, leaving a pattern in the dyed fabric.
Fun fact: I did a batik workshop in Ghana many years ago, it was really fun!
Our kit uses the traditional batik principles, but has updated them to provide a fun painting experience for you. The design has been drawn in wax onto the fabric for you, and we get the immersive task of painting in the gaps. The wax won't be removed in our design, but remains part of the finished art piece.
My experience with this kit
This kit is unlike any craft I've done before! I have no painting experience to speak of (apart from our acrylic painting box a few months ago) and I was a bit nervous that I wouldn't be able to produce something that looked like the picture. But I was pretty pleased with my efforts in the end, so I hope you are too.
The craft itself is pretty simple: you apply paint to the fabric using the paintbrush. As long as your paintbrush is wet enough (more on this in a minute), the paint spreads on the fabric so that one quick touch can fill a small area. It's very satisfying!
I did find that it took a bit of practice to know how wet your brush needed to be, and how much paint to load onto it. If the brush is too wet, it dilutes the colour and the finished result looks a bit faded. But I did go over a few of the areas that I thought were too pale a second time and that worked well.
The most fun aspect of this kit was mixing and blending the colours. I suggest you really play around with mixing the colours (there are only 5 included in the kit), it really does help to give the ombre effect in the finished design. Test each colour you create on kitchen roll so you can see what they look like before applying to your fabric.
When blending several colours together in a single area, make sure the brush is quite wet and work quickly (prepare all the colours you want to use first). The first time I did it I did parts of several areas and then went back with a second colour, but the first colour had already dried and left a stark line instead of a blend. I was able to rescue it with a fair amount of watering and layering colours, but I suggest you don't do that!
Most of all, enjoy the process. This is a calming, immersive craft and one to savour!
I hope you enjoy this kit as much as I did. I look forward to seeing your photos!
If you want to see this kit in action, and get more of my tips from my experience with this kit, watch my video tutorial below!
Next steps
If you've enjoyed this kit, Batik Ying has a whole range of them for you to paint! You can find them on the website here.
This is such an unusual craft that I struggled to find alternative resources for you to move on to if you'd like to do more batik painting! However, a really exciting next step would be to start making your own batik from scratch. I've created a Pinterest board of batik resources, inspiration, real life videos and more. I hope that they give you a deeper understand of what batik is, and encourages you to have a go! (Click the picture below to see the board!)
Alternatively, if you've enjoyed the fabric painting aspect of this kit, I've collated a number of designs to inspire you in my silk painting Pinterest board.
