OUR PROCESS

Each Laughing Bear Garment is designed and produced in our studio located in Saugerties, NY.

The process begins with high quality 100% cotton fabric.

Through the process of 'Batik', the fabrics are transformed into unique and colorful garments.

Images are and drawn in melted wax on the pieces of fabric, one at a time. Every image is drawn freehand, or with original stencil patterns. As the wax cools, it hardens in to a resist. In the dying process colors are unable to penetrate the resist patterns, however the cooled wax cracks allowing some of the dye to seep through. This creates our one of a kind designs. All of our dyes are hand mixed from original color recipes.

After dying, the fabric, or clothing, is boiled in soap and water to remove the wax, shrink the fabric and further set the dye. We boil each garment twice. After a final wash, fabrics are dried, cut and sewn into the final product.

Our original patterns are made and sewn by Heidi Coon.

When laundering...
Our clothing is very easy to care for in your washer and dryer.

There are just a few points to attend to:

• Please do not use woolite or any detergent that contains bleach alternative.
• If bleach or bleach alternative has been used in your machine please rinse machine well first.
• Although our clothes are colorfast, the darker shades should be washed with clothing of darker colors the first few times.
• Use cool dryer setting to fluff up, then hang dry indoors to preserve fabric and color over the years.
• A slight amount of irregularity in the color may occur
  and is part of the nature of batik and hand-dyeing.