Indonesian Batik Influence

Batik fabric in Indonesia is produced by the painstaking process of applying hot wax with a pen to fabric, then dying, and then boiling to remove the wax and repeating the process until the designs are complete. Though there are varying thoughts on the meaning of Batik they all involve *dots*. I have called this set Influence because it is hard to produce dots in machine embroidery without a lot of clipping! instead I have used texture and lines to give the impression of dots. Many batik cloths have an all over pattern behind the main floral designs, so this set includes background designs you can use as I did in the pillow below. Stitched in more pastel colors you can stitch your main designs totally on top of the backgrounds. For the pillow I added a row of decorative stitches on either side of the background and some organza ribbons in matching colors to complete the *overall* pattern effect. The background designs could also be stitched as *tone on tone* to create a subtle, elegant fabric for your designs. I've included pictures and instructions on how I created the pillow top.