A group of quilters from Weyburn and the surrounding area had a trip of a lifetime recently when they visited the home of batik in Bali, Indonesia.
Jill Thorn, a member of the Weyburn Rotary Club, gave a presentation on the trip during which the quilt-makers came home with many metres of unique cloth and learned all about how to create batik.
Jill was accompanied by Shelley Glab, Colleen Sproat and Debbie Giroux from Weyburn, along with Charlene Wimmer from Beaubier, and other ladies from Torquay, Oxbow, Carlyle, Regina and southern Saskatchewan.
The trip to the tropical island was a long one, taking about 48 hours altogether, including lay-overs and a flight delay at Taipei, but in the end, the ladies felt the trip was well worth the effort to get there, said Thorn.
One of the major highlights for her was to learn about batik, with demonstrations on how it is made, and they were given the opportunity to create their own batik picture on cloth.
“I’m not an artist, but luckily the man who showed us how to do this was an artist, and drew the pictures for us,” said Jill as she showed on a power point presentation photos of the process.
“First you draw it on with pencil, then you apply hot bees wax and fill in all the lines you drew in pencil. You turn it over to make sure the wax came in, then you apply paraffin wax where you don’t want the dyes to go. Then we applied the dyes, and sat outside to do it,” Jill explained. “The helpers were incredible. Without them, it would’ve been a much different result.”
After this part was done, the picture was put into a dye bath and boiled to remove the wax, so then the picture would be visible.
Jill noted that her friend, Shelley Glab, had been with her that morning for a walk on a beach at sunrise, and drew that scene for her picture.
“One of the reasons we went to Bali was to find fabric. Our guide didn’t understand what we were looking for,” she said, explaining they had to do some research and looking around before they found a street filled with shops that sold batik cloths.
Jill noted she was able to buy cloth for around $2.20 to $2.40 a metre — cloth that in Canada she has seen sold for as much as $20 a metre. For herself, Jill brought home about 42 metres of fabric, along with bundles of fabric that were precut.
“We did lots of other things too,” added Jill, noting they visited many temples, and went for a ride on an elephant through the jungle.
One place they visited was called “Threads of Life”, dedicated to preserving traditional textiles made in Indonesia, and another was a floating temple called Ulun Danu. At the time of year they were in Bali, there were many festivals on at temples, and they were able to see many people in traditional dress.
The group of ladies stayed in two different resorts, one located on a beach, enabling dips in the ocean, and the other was up a mountain in jungle territory, and each guest had her own cabin with a walled garden, princess beds and outdoor showers.
One day she and Shelley went for a walk, and were asked if they had a security person to go with them. When they asked why, it was so a guide could protect them from wildlife, like the wild monkeys they were able to see in the area.
One site they visited was the Fountain of Youth, which featured a series of fountains under which pilgrims bathed, and another was an orchid garden. In one of the resorts they visited, a group of Balinese young women got a photo with Colleen Sproat, as they were fascinated with them as tourists and came to the resort just to meet some.
When the day came for elephant rides, Jill admitted she was nervous about it because she had heard stories about how elephants were mistreated or gave rides that were not very pleasant. What she found, however, was the elephants were well-treated and healthy, and readily allowed people to come up close to them.
Asked if insects and bugs were an issue at all, Jill said they really weren’t bad, but the weather was very hot and humid while they were there.
One bit of good timing, noted Jill, is that one of the volcanoes known to be active erupted shortly after they were there and caused quite a disruption to the flow of tourists to the country.
“It was an incredible trip, if you ever get the opportunity to go,” she added.
