Wax on . . .

My "new" tjap!

I just love Dharma Trading!  I was on an email "alert" list to be contacted whenever they got in a shipment of copper tjaps (pronounced chops from Indonesia.  Here's what the Dharma website says about them:

These approximately 50 year old collectible tools called Tjaps (or Chops), have been made and used on the island of Java for over a century. They are handmade of copper strips, carefully cut, shaped and soldered into fabulous shapes and patterns. They are used by Batik artists in Java by dipping them into hot wax, shaking off the excess, and then stamping the wax onto the cloth.

Another view (background is a batik fabric made earlier this year)

 I heated up some soy wax this evening and tried out the tjap.  Hmmm . . .LOTS of excess wax and very little design.  I need to work on my technique! 
Stay tuned for photos of this experiment.

More surface design play

Lately, I'm wondering if I'm still a quilter.  Since my Viking desperately needs a tune-up, I'm avoiding any freemotion quilting and spending most of my creative time in surface design.  And I'm loving it!

Here are some of the results from last week's play.  My favorite:

My golden batik.  Waxed designs were drawn with an electric tjanting.

Another evening was spent screenprinting.  I tried a deconstructed screenprinting technique from Susie Monday's Mixed-Media Textile Art CD from Cloth, Paper, Scissors/Interweave Press.  I drew some simple designs on my funky homemade screen using Caran d'Ache crayons, as shown below.  (Note: the rust-colored stain on the screen didn't print, thankfully!  The frame was made from recycled sheer curtain fabric in an old wooden picture frame, tightly wrapped and sealed with duct tape.)

Screen ready to print.

The prints were made using Golden's GAC 9000 textile medium, which you can see on the printed fabric, outlining the dimensions of the screen:

Experiments with deconstructed screenprinting.

Last of all, I used another clean screen and pulled these leaf prints from a hand-cut stencil attached to the back of the screenprinting frame.  The stencil material?  Half of a cut-apart clear poly page protector. (Quick, cheap, available!)

Screenprints of leaf design.

Now, what to do with the prints???  My sewing machine wants to know.