Soy wax yardage

For my dear friend's birthday gift this year I batiked her several long runs of cotton fabric for her next quilting project.

I used soy wax this time rather than traditional wax because I wanted to log in more hours using the stuff to see if my opinion of it would change. It hasn't.

On the plus side, it covers well. It brushes on well and is fine with the tjanting needle.

After ironing out, it rinses off reasonably well which is a plus- no paint thinner or boiling out needed.

On the negative side, it feels terrible on my skin- but why would one put it on the skin anyway, right? Sometimes batik wax splatters on me and this did the same thing but it felt icky. Don't like the feel of it at all. It's oily and crumbly.

The other critical thing is that with full immersion dyeing or even when I would get liberal with the dyes and really heap them on, the soy wax deteriorated at a very high speed and crumbles up to the point of ridiculous. For those times, traditional waxes are needed. When painting on the dyes with a certain amount of care, it's fine.

For me- I will probably use it 10% of the time. The rest of the time, I'll stick with bees, batik, or paraffin mixed waxes.

What do you think?

Happy dyeing!