Nothing Ordinary Here

I have spent most of the past week on holiday in Bali, and with a Viewpoints 9 deadline looming, you can bet I have been giving this next theme a great deal of thought. Of course, when visiting a culture that is distinctly different from one's own, *everything* ordinary is extraordinary ... from the vegetation -





to the unusual foods available -

to the customs and traditional costumes.


So on every sightseeing foray, I have looked around to see if there was subject matter I would like to select for our theme.

The I hit on what I thought was a brilliant response - I would take a batik workshop and then take the batik home to stitch and finish: thus, taking an ordinary piece of fabric and doing something extraordinary with it.

The workshop was absolutely incredible and I enjoyed my day immensely. My instructor, Widya, was fantastic, knowledgeable and patient, and as you can see from some of his finished pieces below, very talented. He is from Java so has a very specific style of batiking.





I decided to begin by doing a combination of line drawing with the janting and stamping with hot wax. What fun!





Then I painted on natural dyes and let it dry. I was happy to leave it there!


But the next steps altered everything - putting on more wax to fill every space with pattern and design (so not me!) and then dipping into the final blue dye, which I had envisioned as a sky blue but which was, in fact, closer to indigo.

I will stop there, leaving you hanging. Because, you see, once it was finished, it did't look like anything Mary Pal would make ... and I don't think I can "make it mine" even with significant stitching. But I won't be back in Canada until the 21st, a mere 5 days before we must post the finished piece. So I have to either come up with some other brilliant idea pronto or rework this Bali Mandala. The pressure is on - stay tuned!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Ubud, Bali