Name: Deborah Joyce
Message: I want to know if I can get a batik look using Elmers Glue and Acrylic paint. I want to teach 4th grade batik style dying, but need it to be easy and safe. I don't know how to mix soda ash or what it is. Do you have any lesosn plans or ideas?

I would not combine acrylic paint with Elmer's glue. The heavy-duty washing required to remove the blue glue gel may remove the paint, as well. Better to combine real dye with the blue glue gel. I could be wrong; perhaps you could wash the glue out without washing out the paint. This will require experimentation in order to be sure, however. I would also avoid the use of all-purpose dye, because it washes out a little with every washing, which is far from ideal when it takes several washings in hot water to remove the glue gel, and because simmering the fabric in hot dye, as is required for hot-water dyes such as all-purpose dye, is inconvenient in the classroom.

Soda ash is used with fiber reactive dye. It is not used with fabric paint, and it is not used with all-purpose dye.

I think that the BLUE Elmer's Washable School Glue Gel is an excellent wax substitute for batiking with children. Do not attempt to use white glue! Only the blue glue gel will work for this method. The children should be given bottles of blue glue gel to apply to 100% cotton fabric. After they apply the glue gel, it must dry completely. You can hold it for them overnight to dry, or you can issue them a lot of hair dryers (which would make the class very warm and very noisy). You should obtain some fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX dye, and soda ash to use with the dye.

To prepare for this class, obtain one 100% cotton (or silk) handkerchief or bandanna for each child, or buy 100% cotton fabric and cut/tear it into appropriate-sized rectangles (allow a little extra, as unhemmed edges will shred in the wash). The fabric/bandannas should be pre-washed in hot water before use. Buy Procion MX dye and soda ash, using mail-order if necessary. Good sources for Procion MX dye are listed on my Sources for Dyeing Supplies page. You can also buy it, for a little more money, from a popular art supply catalog suck as Dick Blick. Look for Procion MX dye. You can use Dylon Cold Water dye. (Be careful to look for "cold water" in the name of the Dylon dye, as Dylon Multi Purpose dye is a hot water dye and not nearly as good.)

For a very quick and easy project, have the children apply the glue gel and let it dry. The next day, let them dip their fabric briefly into a bucket of soda ash dissolved in water, while wearing the kind of heavy rubber gloves that are used in washing dishes. (If they get soda ash on their skin, they should wipe it off right away and then go wash their hands, as it is rather harsh to the skin, though not actually dangerous.) After allowing excess soda ash mixture to drip back into the bucket, they should dip their fabric into your bucket of dye mixed with water. Ideally each piece should be spread out, on a plastic surface, after this, so that none of the moistened glue contacts another portion of the fabric, because the glue will transfer! I would rather not have 20 or 30 fourth-graders handling wet dye, if only because of the potential for mess, so perhaps you or an assistant should do all of the removing of fabric from the dyebath, letting it drip back into the bucket, and spreading the fabric out on the plastic. You will need to discard the dye in your bucket at the end of the class period, because the soda ash that gets into it will 'activate' the dye, and it will go bad after an hour or two.

You can stop there, or you can repeat the process with another color on another day. On the first day, you would use a light color, such as yellow. After the fabric has dried, the children could apply another layer of glue gel, which again must be allowed to dry thoroughly before dipping it in dye. The regions that are covered with glue gel before the first dyebath will stay white. The regions covered after the second one will stay yellow. The regions that are not covered with glue gel will end up a mixture of the two dye colors; for example, if the second dye bath is a deep blue, the combination of the two colors will, of course, be green. When all dyeing steps are finsihed, you should take the fabric pieces home and wash them, first in cold water, and then two or three times in hot water with detergent.

The amount of time that the glued fabric is immersed in the dye must be kept to a minimum, to avoid dissolving the glue gel. Another potential problem is that, if you allow the children to dye the same piece of fabric more than once, as in traditional batik, the dried dye on the fabric could transfer to their clothing and ruin it, and of course it is never a good idea to breathe in dry dye powder. It would probably be best to rinse each piece of fabric in cool water to remove some of the excess dye, before working on it again, though there is the danger of removing some of the glue from the piece before this is desired. A single round of dyeing is certainly much easier, though it omits the important color mixing lesson.

For the recipe for using Procion MX dye, see "How to Dye". For more details about using Elmer's Blue Glue Gel as a resist, see "Immersion Dyeing with Water Soluble Resist, September 2005". Also see "I would like to teach a small 4th and 5th grade class to batik".

The color distinction between the gel and the dye is not obvious until after the fabric has been thoroughly washed in hot water two or three times. The gel actually itself becomes dyed; the undyed regions become clearly visible only after the glue and the excess dye are washed out.



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