I took my fabric home with me and rinsed out the pieces had done with low immersion dyes, they are the sets of 3 in the photos, that have no printing on them. On the waxed batiks, I remooved as much wax as I could with lots of newspaper and a medium iron. I swapped newspaper frequently, and went through alot of it. Put down slick, glossy pages on the bottom to protect your ironing board pad. After removing alot of wax, the fabric was still stiff and bits of excess dry dye was splotched on it. I washed the fabric using my washing machine, HOT water and a capfull of Synthrapol detergent. Immediately after washing I put them in the dyer and wiped off the wax ring in the washing machine. It was still warm and soft and wiped off easily with a paper towel. The fabric came out beautifully with no stiffness that traditional bee's wax batik has. The soy wax was much easier to remove, being water soluble. The bee's wax needs to be boiled to remove the residue of wax, a much more complicated process.
So the soy wax has several advantages.
1. It melts at a lower temperature.
2. It is white, not yellow brown so you can see truer colors on previous layers.
3. It is water soluble so wax removal and cleanup is easier.
I got bee's wax locally from a bee/honey guy for $3.50 a pound
The soy wax was $4 a pound from Dharma with shipping for 5 pounds it came to $6.00 a pound, and I shared the extra wax with my friends in Fyber Cafe.
Now I need to find something fun to do with my finished fabric!
I hope you have enjoyed my first atempts at blogging. AMY
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