Q&A - more than you want to know

In the last comment section there were a couple of questions. Karoda asked: Are you taking the wax out with the iron and newspaper? I am. I put several layers of newspaper down under the cloth and one or two on top and iron away. The newspaper absorbs the wax and takes most of it out of the cloth. Jenni asked: Why soy wax? Is the soy wax easier to iron out than household? There are several reasons for soy wax. Most commonly, batik is done with a combination of beeswax and paraffin. It may give a better crackle than soy wax but it is much harder to get out of the fabric. Yes, it irons out...but to get all of it out you need to boil it or send it to the dry cleaner. Soy wax is non-toxic, so not such a problem with fumes. It is softer than the traditional combination so it may not crackle as well if that's what you are looking for. But it irons out almost completely and then you just wash in HOT water and synthrapol and you're done. If you are doing batik on silk scarves or garments you will want to get all of the wax out; if you're batiking fabric for quilts it doesn't matter so much: the residual stiffness is just fine. BTW - sadly, I have not had time to go to garage sales and we don't really have any thrift stores around here so I spent $20 at Target and bought a new electric frying pan that seems fine.