Batik, a visit to Nor Arfa Craft Complex

Been living in Kemaman, Terengganu.Batik is not an exotic cultural for me. I have seen it lots of time on my Malays friends, or anyone who deck with it when I go out in my hometown.

The grand entrance in NACC

Batik, is a textile art, not sure where it origin. It's quite common in east coast  of Malaysia.I usually notice about it's existance during the grand ceremony in my high school, which most of the VVIP, like headmaster, chairman of PIBG wear it, not sure what cloth they use, most 

Today, thanks to my friend, Zoe Yin who brought me here. Though batik is so common to me,  but I bet even most of the local people rarely know the process of making batik too~~ 

So, you will get a general pictures of how batik is being made.

THe block that print various geometric pattern on cloth.

That's not all, they also make the block here too! Actually I was surprise to see young skillful workers here.

The moulding of them seem like so difficult, but it seem so easy to them. Really can't take my eyes away from this.

Me and blocks that arranged nestly in their row. Magnificient!

Next, I also quite captivated by the more complicated process of songket weaving.Standing there for 2 mins, the gold thread is charged to drew the pattern on songket. Their pattern is not an ordinary one, with a lot of curve, point here and there. But how did the girl manage to weave it. FYI, she took about 30s for one turn before she strengthen the songket by dragging the woodblock to her.

The only senior that I saw here. This is hand-drawn batik in making.After the drawing, they will boil it in other room and dry it under the sun.

block printed batik in making.

the ingredients and tools for drawing pattern on it. 
Noor Arfa is a popular batik maker in Terengganu here.A visit into it's complex has shown us how the batik are being made. On normal day, there is no guide to explain us about the process. And that we just go through everything ourselves.Nor Arfa has hand-drawn and block printed batik.For the block-printed, they have to first produce the block, a metal object that imprint flower and geometric motif on cloth later on.If you pay close attention, their geometric motif is more of like Malay cultural, seldom you will see a straight line geometric, most of them are curve and connect with other curve line. For the hand-drawn batik, an object known as canting that has a sharp point like a pen is used to drawn.

There is songket weaven here. Mostly , gold thread weaven in between to create various geometric pattern on cloth. All that I can see is that it's quite time consuming to produce a songket when it has to be 2 or 4 meters.

Went into the boutique shop that sell batik. It looks like a studio then a shop, it take me about 30mins to complete my sight-seeing at here. Unfortunately, camera is not around here. Hence, no pic for this section. The batik inside ranging from Rm10- Rm300.  I was dumbfounded as I always see a piece of 4m nice baju kurung cloth only cost about Rm10-20 per meter.



Later, we just tried this mini batik painting on the spot. Depending on the size of your painting, the one that I chose is Rm10.

My advice is TRY if you haven't. 

I actually quite sick to see how everytime which ever place that have interactive batik painting, you only only chose from the limited drawing, and it's basically same drawing everywhere, in Kuala Terengganu, or in Cherating, Pahang, even 5 star resort in Langkawi beach. They have seldom change their drawing.


Looking for sourvenir from Terengganu?  Batik is one of them =) I was once use batik whenever I go to beach. 

This was pic taken years ago, feel that I was so happy go lucky that time~~~ hahaha 




If you would like some food from Terengganu, keropok lerok or KT包， 

the pic source of bread here.  Not only did Terengganu has Keropok Lekor, I prefer keropok nipis and Lekor. Cause it's super crunchy!! and I will get scored whenever I ate too much cause it's a bit heaty to be frank.