You will need:

- Drop cloth or heavy cotton canvas

- Paraffin wax or Beeswax (or a combo of the two)

- Crock pot or double boiler

- Rit liquid dye

- Pencil

- Scissors

- Gloves

- Old paintbrushes

Step 1: Cut your fabric to the preferred size and lightly sketch out your design. We cut our drop cloth to 34″ X 46″ and went with a simple flower crown illustration for our design.

Step 2: Heat up your wax in an old crock pot or using a double boiler on the stove. Heat the wax to around 170′F (80′C) making sure that your wax does not get to the flash point. (never leave it unattended).

Step 3: Take an old paint brush (one you don’t mind tossing) and trace over the design with the wax as you would with paint. We recommend placing some cardboard underneath the fabric so you don’t destroy the surface of whatever you are working on. Remember, you are painting where you do NOT want the dye to go. Make sure your wax is at a hot enough temperature so that it absorbs into the thread. You dont want your wax just sitting on top of the fabric, because that will effect the outcome. Allow wax to harden.

Step 4: Take liquid RIT dye and mix with warm water in a large plastic bucket (or mix the dye as indicated on the packet you are using) Don’t be a afraid to play around with the ratios of dye to water- use test strips until you achieve the color you really want. We used a black dye and the color ended up being a purple-ish charcoal tone.

Step 5: Put on some plastic gloves and dip your fabric into the dye….if you want it darker, allow dye to soak in as much as possible to achieve the darkest shade. Ours was left in the dye for about 15 minutes before rinsing. 

Step 6: Rinse with room temp water and hang to dry.

Step 7: To remove the wax: Place a paper towel on both the top and bottom of your fabric. Iron the fabric until all the wax has heated and lifted from the fabric. Replace the paper towel as you go until all the wax is absorbed.

Your fabric is ready to hang! You can choose to display your fabric however you want, but what we did was sew a small pocket at the top of the fabric, about an inch wide. We inserted a wooden rod and attached string to either end to hang. The edges were left unfinished.