Malang (malangkota.go.id) – Starting from her passion for fabric crafts, in 2018 Meylina started a batik craft business. A year later, Lina, as she is familiarly called, became interested and eventually fell in love with the natural dyeing method. Now, she is developing fabric and leather crafts with the ecoprint method.
"I switched to natural dyeing, which is making batik with natural colors. Then looking at various references from the internet, it turns out that natural motifs like leaves are quite good. So print real leaves. The color and shape are printed directly on the fabric, although sometimes there are also colors that do not match the original. For example, the color is green, when printed on the fabric it becomes yellow," he said.
According to him, the batik craft that he previously worked on required quite a lot of energy to make it. In addition, he also thought about the waste of batik dyes that could not be disposed of carelessly because it could damage the environment. "Well, I thought that if it's a natural dye like this, it's okay to throw it into plants," he said.
Lina said the fabric used for ecoprint is the same as that used for batik tulis and cap in general, namely fabric that does not contain polyester, such as linen, cotton, rayon, and silk. This woman who wears a hijab said that the choice of fabric type will affect the color resistance of the ecoprint results.
Lina's ecoprint business, Griya Madukara, apparently does not only process natural colors on fabric media. Lina also applies these natural dyes on leather and paper media. "Just like fabric, initially this leather is in the form of sheets and then modified into bags and shoes," she said.
Lina said that not many people know about ecoprint products. “Indeed, this ecoprint method is not easy to do. Not all leaves can be printed perfectly on the fabric. It has to be trial and error. So it is actually as difficult as batik tulis. Many people think that it is expensive because it is only attached to leaves, but in fact, it can be made in more than one go. It has to be repeated experiments,” she said.
However, Lina stated that there are quite a lot of people interested in her work. “Usually it’s people who understand art, thank God there are some who like it. We market it through Instagram and our market is already national. For fabrics, our price range starts from IDR 350.000,00 to IDR 1.000.000,00 depending on the type of fabric and size, for clothes it starts from IDR 200.000,00 to IDR 800.000,00 depending on the type of fabric and model. We also have bags at a price of IDR 300.000,00 to IDR 1.000.000,00,” she said.
Furthermore, the resident of Jalan Madukoro Number 17 Malang City explained that there are several ecoprint techniques used. There is a ponding technique, which is hitting the leaves directly onto the fabric until all the fibers are transferred to the fabric. There is also a basic technique, which is steaming without base coloring, so that only the tannin color of the leaves appears. Finally, there is a botanical technique that uses a steaming technique using a base of natural coloring and leaves. In addition to being applied to fabric, it can also be used on leather media, namely cow, goat, or sheep skin.
To further popularize ecoprint, Lina also admitted to inviting artisans to collaborate and teach this coloring technique. People who want to know about beautiful and artistic products can open the Instagram account @griya_madukara. (ari/ram)
