Inspiration

 Maki-age Pine Cones

 Maki-age seems like the perfect technique.  I'm worried about the spaces between the bound shapes, if it is too small the dye won't penetrate and the design will loose its focus.  So a sample is in order, and I have plenty of scraps of the silk noil gauze  from making the jackets.  So I enlarge the design (the pine cone without the stem is about 8" high)and traced it onto the cloth:

I drew two pine cones; one with the purple dressmakers marker (Dritz Disappearing Ink Marking Pen) and this one with the pencils I use for tie-dye (EZ hot-iron transfer pencil).   Both gave me problems on the nubby, very absorbent surface of the silk noil.  I tried 3 different purple making pens and none of them put out enough ink to clearly mark the cloth; I had a faint lines with gaps.  The pencil, which I use to write on damp T-shirts when I'm preparing them for tie-dyeing wouldn't write on the dry noil, I had to dip the pencil in water to get it to write.

I stitched each little motif for maki-age.  The stem I did last and did in a open satin stitch that gathers the stem.  Then I gathered and tied off each section (required band-aids for blisters):

Now I bound each section, I dampened the cloth with a spray bottle so that the cloth compresses well.  Since the poofs were already formed I sort of use the kanoko binding technique; forming a half-hitch over my fingers, transferring it to the poof and then pull it tight.  I put 2-3 half-hitches on each poof, all 17 of them.

The poofs were small and I was concerned about getting them effectively bound but each was hard after I got it bound.  I soaked it then dyed it in a dark brown Lanaset dye bath.

Obviously the Lanaset does NOT dye cotton string, the color contrast makes of easier removal of the binding string.  A seam ripper helps get out the stitching thread.

Well I may have bound it too much, I'd like a little more patterning inside each motif.  Next time I'll just put one half-hitch on each poof and I might be a bit more brown dye in the white areas.  This still wet and although  I don't usually wash the Lanaset dyes until they dry, I washed this one to get rid of the marking lines.

 I washed it with Orvus, NADA.  I tried Synthrapol. I tried all the laundry stain removers I have; nada, NADA. 

Ok, this bright pink is there forever, can I tone it down?  I mixed a bit of green dye into some print paste and painted it on the pine cone  several times and then heat set it.   The white turned chartruse and the pink may be a little duller but it still dominates the design.  Finished design:

Thank god it is only a sample!  I hate pink at this moment.

I have used these pencils on cotton T-shirts for years and they disappear, never had this happen before. Silk takes dye sooo much easier than cotton.  Usually when I soak the T's before dyeing the red line disappear.  Didn't when I soaked the silk.  Then the dyebath was acid and heated where the cotton dyes are alkaline and not heated.  I now see that it says

"The heat melts the design into fabric and becomes permanent."

I'm looking for soft graphite pencils.  On to the next mistake. 

Posted by Karren at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I found this image, labelled Hiroshi Murase.  It is quite intriguing.  It has a lot of texture, both visual and physical.  This is probably what I would think of as the back of the cloth.  I see flowers, centers are kanko dots and the petals maki-age!  The vines or leaves appear to be ori-nui, i.e., running stitch on a fold.

The visual texture between the motifs was caused by gathers, these gathers were not moved during the dyeing process or the color would be more even.  Reminds me of willow pattern or flying geese pattern.  What is not clear to me is how these gathers were immobilized; in both willow and flying geese patterns the gathered cloth is tied to a rope.  No string lines here.

Challenge reminder

The challenge finishes at midnight 31 October at which time I will close the Flickr group, so up load your photos before that (EDT). I suspect some of the dates that the photos were taken are default settings on the camera, please check yours for accuracy.

We are having more exciting photos added to the pool!  It seems to me that everyone is learning something.

Posted by Karren at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

You can see some more images of student work here.

Posted by Karren at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Here is a piece that was origami folded, then resisted in my own way and immersion discharged. You can see that the discharge did penetrate well.

Some nice fuzzy edges, eh?
This and others that were done at the same time are here.

Posted by Karren at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Grace sent two more images of diapers, with more white. I have left the images large so that you can see some of the beauty in the shading, diffusion of the indigo.

Posted by Karren at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I saw and took the picture of this piece at the ISS in Harrogate in 2002. They were a series of banners displayed, made by a group of Japanese women, called the Shibori Group I believe. Cotton and indigo I believe. Anyhow I find this piece quite intreguing and has led me to an interest in Origami Shibori. Here is a detail of the same piece.

Posted by Karren at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Folding origami is the easy part. Dyeing it is the hard part. Getting dye thru all those layers is the challenge.
Dyes have different ease of penetration. I percieve the penetration to be the highest with fiber reactive dyes , so in orger of decreasing penetration

discharge (sulfur dioxide, a gas)
fiber reactives
acid dyes
indigo

My theory assumes that larger molecules penetrate less. Even so the book shows that good penetration can be achieved with even indigo. How do they do it?

First they buy ready-to-use indigo in a bottle:

Aren't you a wee bit jealous? I'd love to buy ready-to-use indigo.

Then they place the tied cloth in an appropriately sized plastic bag:

Then some ready-to-use indigo is added to the bag:

The air and blue indigo are removed from the bag and then the bag is clamped shut. This is the critical step-- having the bag totally filled with the indigo bath and no air. Here is another picture of a larger piece: left: expelling the air, right: then clamped.

Once you have the bag sealed, you can then massage the wad of cloth inside to increase the penetration.

This way they have achieved good penetration on dense cotton with even indigo.

Posted by Karren at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Here is the page on tying umbrellas from the Japanese book that I used as inspiration for these two pieces. You can see the corners folded into the center (top left), insert a chop stick and some suggestions for tying.

All dyeing in the book is done with indigo. Here is a page of their results:

There are 3 variations on a theme on this page, top is a single layer of cloth, middle one has been folded in to the center once and the bottom one has been folded in again. The information is presented graphically and easy to understand.

The chopstick gives one a hard core to use to push the cloth open or pull it closed. A few more choices than with a spider web. Now you have a use for all of those single use chopsticks you get when you eat sushi out. Reuse-- do a little part to save the earth.

Posted by Karren at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While visiting my friend, Grace, yesterday I took a picture of some Japanese diapers she bought at Sri Threads in the New York City area. This is a narrow cotton sewn into a loop, you can see the seam on the left side.

And a detail where one sees the gradiation within the design created by the diffusion of the indigo:

The SRI Threads website is another good place to be inspired by Japanese shibori textiles.

Posted by Karren at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Another attack on getting the dye to penetrate all the layers in a thick stack of cloth created by origami folding. Use open weave cloth. So I'm doing the same folds but with a very porous cloth, silk chiffon, to try to get good penetration. Here you can see how porous the silk is, you can see all the spots on my print table thu' the chiffon.

Here I have folded all the corners to the center, forming 2 layers, and you can still see the spots.

Another set of folds. Now 4 layers of chiffon and you can still see the spots.

Another set of folds. These did NOT meet neatly in the center. Now with 8 layers it becomes opaque.

One last set of folds, now 16 layers.

I pressed and basted the folds in place. Then I inserted a chopstick (I have many in the dye studio) and folded the cloth around it like and umbrella. Parts were tied. Some parts can be pushed together to open that area to more dye.

After soaking in plain water this was dyed in a yellow gold acid dye.

At the end of that dyebath it looked like this.

Some ties were taken out and new ones added.

Then is was dye red with acid dyes.

After the red dyebath the ties were re-arranged and it was dyed in a blue acid dye bath and looked like this at the end of the dyeing.

Now to remove all the resists and see what we have.

The outside, the one exposed to the dye, looks thus:

I don't like the undyed cloth in the top right quadrant. The backside looks like so:

I can see that the blue didn't make it all the way thru. And all the way open:

My conclusion is that there are limits to how far the dye will penetrate even a porous cloth.

Posted by Karren at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This made me say WOW! it is from narablog.com. Narablog has been one of my favorite places to look at historical Japanese shibori. A great source of inspiration. The shibori is in with other types of textiles. Narablog has now started a Flickr pool of just shibori she(assumed) is sharing with us.

If you have ever dismissed tyeing spider webs as too tie-dye-y the first pictures in her pool should open your mind to new possibilies.

Posted by Karren at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here is another piece I made at the workshop and forgot to post with the others. It is 22'x 72". It was a chartruese overdyed with burgandy.

Posted by Karren at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is a piece I made in the workshop in St. Peter MN. Then since I've been home I've been trying to get a better feeling for the technique. So I've tried 3 different silks, with acid dyes. Acid dyes are so easy when you are trying things! Make up a pot of dye, swish the silk around in it until it gets some color, take it out and open it up. See the results now. Leave the pot, Fold another piece, swish it around in the dye bath....

Back to the studio!

Posted by Karren at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I love the soft fuzzyness of this dye that diffused in. I wish I could get this kind of effect. It reminds me of the Norwegian Trine Mauritz Eriksen's work, monochromatic on wool.

See more of her work.
One can see the light glowing in these pieces. Stunning!

This is a picture of some Japanese shibori taken by shiborizone and published on Flickr

This is a sort of half curtian that the Japanese hang in doorways, it is split in the middle to walk through. This use of stitched shibori to create an image is effective. The bottom of the curtian has a stitched shibori pattern.

Posted by Karren at 08:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is a towel, cotton with indigo, for sale. The pattern is a classic shibori one. Opening a shibori piece is always the most exciting moment, after all the work of making the resists and then dyeing it. Did it work? It is a little suprising how this pattern is made. I hope you sound as excited as the woman off screen in the video. Watch the reveal.

Posted by Karren at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is a sample I did with the others but didn't get a photo to post. You can clearly see that the smaller size butterfly has more definition.

Posted by Karren at 06:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By the end of part one we had made our stitches on the folded cloth. Make as many butterflies as you want on your piece. I made two here.

The pieces must be soaked in water before dyeing. This is a general rule but especially important when making resists for the dyeing; dry cloth will wick the dye under the resists and you will have no memory of the stitching you did. Here in a piece soaking in just plain water. If you did not pre-wash your cloth you can add a drop of Synthrapol or other non-interferring detergent to the water.

After a half an hour or so of soaking, dye your cloth by whatever immersion method you use. Of course the dye must be appropriate to the fiber you use. I used indigo on the cotton T-shirt, and acid dyes on the silk. The orginal Chinese example appears to be indigo on cotton cloth.

When the cloth is in the dye bath it takes extra care and movement of the cloth to get an evenly colored background and good defition of the resists for the butterflies. There is only moderate compression under the threads so these butterflies take more care than many other techniques. Put on your gloves and get your hands in the dyebath. Open up all the folds and swish the the cloth around. Then open up the other folds and swish some more. The more opening of folds and swishing the more definition of the butterflies you will have. I want the background as even in coloration as I can get and the dye up to but not under the resists. You can peek under the threads as your are working the dyebath to see how it goes. Just becareful not to move the threads.

When the dyebath is complete, remove the cloth. The top layer will be almost completely dyed like so:

What happens next depends on what dyes you used. For acid dyes, that do not require a wash down procedure, you may now remove the threads to see the results. For indigo and fiber reactive dyes I would wash before removing the threads; these dyes have a tendecy to back stain and may lightly color your white areas if you wait to wash after you remove the threads.

Here is one I made on a silk/nylon fleece with a navy acid dye. They are about 2.5 inches across. The defition is fairly good and the background is even enough to be able to make out the butterfly. The antennae are the top layer where there is almost no resist.

The first butterflies I made were the ones on the T-shirt with indigo. They came out great! For this tutorial the first try was on a very open weave silk noil and the dye penetrated more than I wanted, a due to the open weave of the cloth. Maybe it is a ghost of a butterfly. This is about 7 inches across.

Then I tried a very tightly woven silk broadcloth, a favorite of mine for stitched shibori. I was doing it in a very small bath and I turned on the heat and the telephone rang. By the time I got back to the dye bath it had boiled and exhausted. I had not worked the cloth in the bath. There is no defition and the background is mottled.

It maybe that the braodcloth will work if dye properly but I tried a silk noil jacquard and the silk/nylon fleece. I did work them in the dye bath and they both came out well. I also made different sizes on the same cloth. Here is the silk noil jacquard, notice that the smaller butterfly (lower) is better defined.

The stitching of the butterfly is not labor intensive but since it is only moderate compression it is a bit tricky to dye.

A thick, spongy cloth like the T-shirt jersey is the easiest to work with.

Not all dyes penetrate the same. Indigo penetrates the least and is the easiest to resist. Unforunately running an indigo dye bath takes some skill. Instant indigo may be the easy solution for indigo. Acid dye are next on ease of resisting. Fiber reactive dyes penetrate the farthest because of their small molecular size and are therefore the hardest dye to use for this resist.

Size of the motif matters, too. The Chinese sample is less than an inch across. I found that the defition was good up to about 2.5 inches then it dropped off.

Samples will show if a particular combination of cloth, size, dye and technique will work.

Ok folks, if you like these tutorials and want more I need some feed back. I'd like to see the butterflies you make. Make them and post a comment and a picture. The picture can be at Flickr:all things shibori. Tell us what kind of cloth, dye and the approximate size of the motif.

Posted by Karren at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is dedicated to the delightful Minnesotan women in the Origami Shibori Workshop in St. Peter. They were curious about how to make resist-dyed butterflies on an indigo T-shirt that I had made. The simple technique is Chinese in origin, I believe. I have only seen it done in indigo.

I have also seen in the indigo work of the Miao Peoples in China too. My first experience was on t-shirts in indigo and the results were pleasing:

HOW TO MAKE THE BUTTERFLIES

As you can see the design is based on 6-fold symmetry. Chose your cloth, I stated with natural colored silk noil cloth.

Start by folding your cloth in half. This fold will bisect your butterfly. It can be on or off grain, it depends on the placement you want.

Now you will fold it in thirds, like cutting a pie into 6 pieces. I fold the front over about a third

then the back over the other way and adjust so that all edges line up.

You should now have 6 layers of cloth. Then you fold down the tip of the cone

Now you need a sturdy thread and a needle to carry it through the cloth.

Thread the needle with a double thread and knot the end. Poke the needle though the point that has been folded over.

Pull the thread through until the knot rest against the cloth. Now pass the thread over to the side with the knot, catch it under the knot and go back to the place where it came out. Poke the needle back through the cloth almost in the same spot it came out, emerging on the other side right by the knot. Now snug up the thread. This is tricky, you need it tight enough to make little dents in the cloth at the fold, but not too tight so that the point buckles and won't lay flat. Then make a stitch that catches the thread and holds it in place beside the knot.

Tie off on the other side.

The thread looks like a v on both sides and the there is a knot on each side. The cloth still lies flat but the thread is pulled tight enough to to make little dents in the cloth at the fold. Finish your stitches and soak your cloth. You will then be ready to dye your cloth, part 2.

Posted by Karren at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm taking some colorful jackets to Boston with me for the show. All the jackets are the same style but not the same size. The dress form is a size 12 and wears all the jackets.

This colorway is Purple Passion.

This is Red Pop.

And this is Kumquat, a delightful bright orange with olives and browns.

What I like best are solid areas and the arashi shibori areas. I decided to accentuate that in the black/champagne design.

This is my favorite.

The jackets are in a light weight silk noil, a causual fabric. Easy to wear with jeans, slacks or a dress.

Posted by Karren at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In our push to get jackets ready for the last show I did 6 jackets in one batch, with more agitation than in the previous dye baths. The black came out great but the resists were not tight enough for the level of agitation. So when the threads were removed they looked like this:

Needless to say we did not take these to the show. We dyed some in a denim color afterwards and they came out nicely. But the lesson is that just changing one thing can change the result.

Another jacket that did not travel to the tropics, is one that had the hydrangea design:

One tiny hole and the whole jacket is ruined! This usually happens when the stitches are removed.

There was an African woman who attend the International Shibori Symposium in Santiago, Chile who was the best at a technique the involved embroidery stitches on a glazed cotton. The white cloth is embroidered with raffia then dyed, then the embridery stitches are remove. She was the best because she never cut the cloth. Quite a feat!

Here is one piece that has been done with raffia embroidery.

Posted by Karren at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I like the pattern of these motifs but not the pink ground color; a little too sweet for my taste. So I tried it again with a more neutral, in fact the color in this sample is the rosegold from the previous entry and was dyed with those other samples.

If is aways a suprise what colors you see when you jutapose two neutral colors. Here the lavender grey still looks lavender grey but the rosegold appears quite orange. (I'm judging for the samples in natural light, who knows what colors you are seeing on your monitor.)

And just a little Japanese sample in the same vein:

Posted by Karren at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I would like a color combo that is light in value, so I'm trying a white/rosegold combo. The sides were finger pleated then loosely bound to hold the pleats in place and immersion dyed. As the sample came out of the bath it looked like this:

The bath looked like this:

This bath is well exhausted, that means that nearly all the dye is on the silk. The dark spots are flame marks on the bottom of the pot. Granted this is a pale color and they are easier to exhaust than say black.

After removing the strings and drying it looks like this:

Or a detail:

Posted by Karren at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

over all view

closer

detail

These are some images I got from a now expired action on ebay of a traditional Japanese piece. I like the individual shapes and the crackle inside the shape. The stylized wisteria doesn't do much for me. I'd like to try it in a lower contrast color combo. This is a variation on capped shibori.the same technique as in these samples, These samples are more complex because the ground is mottled and I used discharge. I think that the bits of color inside the motif could be emphazied by having a simpler design.

Here I've drawn and stitched the motifs on the natural color silk. I also bound some dots.

Here I'm applying some pink dye suspended in foam (shaving cream). Note the difference between the color of the foam in the dish on on the silk as the dye leaves the foam to go into the silk.

Since the silk was damp from dyeing the pink the binding is very tight. Wet silk always compresses more. Then it was immersion dyed a lavender gray.

This picture is a little out of focus but I think that you can still see that the dye did not take on the compressed silk between the threads. The tip is not compressed and took the gray dye but you can still see pink between the threads bindings.

Here are the finished motifs. I do like the lower contrast but the pink is a little too sweet, don'tcha think. Grace said the motifs looked like lace to her. I think I'll try it again with a more neutral under color for the motifs. I think I'll lose the dots.

Posted by Karren at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is the sample from yesterday opened. The gray lavender ground is fairly uniform even between the motifs-- yeah! You can see the difference between the capped and bound motifs. Here is more detail:

This one is capped.

This one is bound, you can see the gray lavender spot in the center and the bits that radiate out.

There is something else going on here, we can see more than the starting mottled color and the ground color. The complex and detailed areas are caused by the discharge. The discharging reagent is actually sulfur dioxide, a gas, which you produce in the dye bath by decomposition. Gases can penetrate farther into the goods than liquids, such as the dye-bath, can. This means that with the same resist you will not be able to cover all the area discharged by over-dyeing. These little near-white areas between the mottled color and the ground color are the discharge halos. They sure add a degree of complexity to this design.

Posted by Karren at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I have dicided I want to use the lavender grey color as a ground color, now I need some colors to go with. I'm going to try some more capped shibori.

This time I am trying a mottled ground color instead of white.

Then I drew some irregular diamond shapes inspired by the individual floretes of a hydrangea

The space between the motifs is a critical factor; if they are too close the ground becomes mottled too and the design is confusing. There is an inch or more between all motifs. Then I stitched around each shape, starting and stopping in the same place.

After all were stitched I gather them up with all the poofs facing the some way. I don't know if it is better to cap these poofs or bind them. The binding tends to create a spot that serves as the focal point but just might be too busy with the mottled color. But this is a sample; I'll try both, since i have 6 motiifs I'll cap 3 and bind 3.

Now I don't want the ground to be mottled so I think I'll discharge before I dye. After a long soak in water I discharged these dyes.

The ground looks a little turquoise even after washing. But when I added the piece to the dyebath that I had already adjusted to pH 4.5 all the blue went away! Anyhow after dyeing the piece looks good.

You can see that most of the piece is grey. What is much harder to see is that the color is still there under the plastic caps. Also the color between the motifs look pretty even, at least as much as you can see at this stage.

STAY TUNED FOR THE RESULTS, check the blog tomorrow!

Actually I lost my final picture and I need some daylight to take it again.

Posted by Karren at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here are some more images of Pat's lovely work and her words.

This is a piece that was capped repeatedly using discharged and dyed with vat, acid and Sabracon dyes.

This is an orinui pattern bound on a rope with a forked bamboo stand and dyed with natural dye.

This one is another bound on a forked bamboo stand.

This is a tazuna variation also bound on a forked bamboo stand also discharged and using various dyes.

And this is a spectacular installion:

These two are from an installation for the Christmas concert/service at Christ Chapel in 2005. There were 24 12-yard panels. The first picture is from the finale with the chorus and the second is a close-up of a panel on the east side.

Posted by Karren at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At the Arts Center of Saint Peter in Minnesota in the Colonel Theodore G. Moline Gallery:
Jan. 11-Feb. 11 - Pat Freiert: Surface Play / shibori & Lee Salminen: Squares and Os / paintings & prints. Reception: January 13, 2-4 p.m.

Pat does lovely work and you can read a bit about her here.

Her work that I've seen in person is more exciting than this image so I contacted her and asked her to email me some others. I'll put them up as soon as I get them. Go see them in person if you can.

Posted by Karren at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Glennis of Shibori GIrl offered her shibori group on Flickr in a comment, I'm reposting it here so that you all see it.

I set up a flickr photo pool for shibori called "all things shibori" a couple of months ago- it has about 9 members- it would be great to see more people join and add their work!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/shibori/

Make comments, tell me what you want, like or don't. Try some itajime and share.

Posted by Karren at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is Calvin Klein's shibori print bed linens. And now you know how the design was developed even if this is a printed version. See this ; granted we haven't worked our way up to cloth yet, but we will.

Are any of you doing any of this? Do you have pictures, do we need to set up a site on Flickr where we can all share itajime?

Posted by Karren at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Here are two more sheets of paper I did with the right triangle fold described here. This is also the fold that was used to make these two Japanese pieces (I, II). We have an idea how these Japanese pieces were made; precise right triangle fan fold, two colors and a very quick controlled dip.
Mine were allowed to absorb more ink and look very different.

I looove the fuzzy edges of the design where the ink diffuses in.

Another shape that you can fold for itajime is an isoscelese triangle. The goods are fan folded in one directions as before then the triangles are formed in the second folding. This will give the designs 6-fold symmetry, more like snowflakes.

You have a long narrow rectangle at the end of the first fan fold. The first fold will be at a 60 degree angle.

You will some kind of device to measure the angle, a protractor is the first that comes to my mind but the first one I found in my studio was a ruler used by quilters with rotary cutters, that had a 60 degree line marked.

This first fold goes to the center of the triangle, not all the way. After you make the next fold you will see the entire triangle.

Keep folding back and forth in this manner, matching edges of the paper packet to the edges of the triangle and matching the points. The top side will have a half triangle .

The back side may or may not finished with a full triangle. Keep folding the little bits until nothing sticks out beyond the triangle.

When this paper was all folded I dipped all the edges into sumi ink like I did the others, to form a grid.

Here are two grids I made.


You can see that the hexagon has six-fold symmetry like snowflakes and this is the fold used to make a previous entry.

If any of you are trying this, how do you think this piece was folded? Stunning, eh?

Posted by Karren at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Folding is the first step in itajime. I’m going to practice on paper since it is the easiest to fold. The goal today is to produe grids or networks by dyeing the edges just one color.

I have some rice paper I bought but any absorbent paper will work. Absorbent papers you may have in your house include paper towels and coffee filters. Test any paper you want to use to see that it is absorbent. It does not have to be as absorbent as a paper towel but if it doesn’t suck up some water it won’t work. I am using sumi ink today; it was the largest bottle of ink in the store. You need plenty to pour into a shallow dish. You will dip the folded paper into the ink so the ink needs to be about ¼” or 0.5cm deep and the dish needs to be bigger than the folded paper.

The trick with all itajime is to fan fold (or accordion fold, different words same fold) the goods so that each edge is exposed to the ink/dye.

Here you can see that each edge can touch the ink.

You can now dip the folded edges in ink/dye. If you don’t have a dish or tray the length of the paper you can loosely curl it around to fit in your dish. This tends to open it up more in some places but that can create interesting variations.

This was curled up and opened in the middle. You can also see that all the folds did NOT
line up precisely and consequently some folds were too high to touch the ink. Precision in folding is rewarded with every edge getting ink.

Or the paper that is fan folded can be fan folded in the other directions. The most obvious fold is a square.

Just make sure that you go back and forth folding. If you go over and over in folding you will create and inside and outside and the dye will have difficulty getting to the inside.

Here I am just dipped all the edges in the sumi ink.

Even in the second fan fold it can be difficult to get the ink/dye to the innermost layer. Here I am peeking to see if the ink came all the way to the inner layer.

Folding squares makes an all over grid.

Now the second fold can be a right triangle, again back and forth, also called a flag fold.

Here I dyed all the edges.

Now the ink did not get to all the insides of all the folds; it did penetrate on the right but not on th left. This means that one bar or line of the grid will be missing in the overall pattern.

Now the pattern is a grid with diagonals making a cross in the center. Just because they are done the same way doesn’t mean that they will look the same, but they will have the same symmetry.

To be continued...

Posted by Karren at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm always suprised at a show when some one says to me that there is "nothing else like this here". I just walked down the same aisle and saw every other wearable booth with shibori. My conclusion is that they only see the pleats and haven't a clue that even a lot of tie dyed T-shirts are pleated while they are being dyed.

Most shibori is done to create patterning on the cloth. I do my share of it, as you may have seen in the stingray dress. Here are a few examples of interesting patterning crated using arashi shibori, the same pole wrapping technique I use.

This one I found on Sophie Junction's blog. It looks like the black was discharged and only part of it at that.

that was made by DanteSpirit. This one was dyed and over-dyed.

One point I'd like to make is that the same technique that makes beautiful pleats is different from what I think makes beautiful designs.

Posted by Karren at 07:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I have made a few posts (i, ii, iii, iv) about using a black dye to get black and white shibori. You want a true, deep black and white (determined by the whitness of the cloth you are dyeing) and of course, shades of grey. What you don't want is shades of blue or pink or halos of purple--that is any color. There have been success and failure; not an easy task to get B&W.

Fiber influences your chance of success; both Neki and I have achieved it on silk. My failures have been on cotton.

The dye also effects the outcome; we had success with Lanaset Black and Dylon Ebony Black. Now Lanaset is an acid dye and acid dye families usually have a black manufactured color (not a mixture of other colored dyes) . The Lanaset one is a true black,some from other acid dye families have a cast, say purple for example. So the Lanaset one is special. There are probably other true black acid dyes that I don't know, there are a lot of acid dyes. Now fiber reactive dyes, commonly used for cotton, do not usually have a black manufactured color and the black is mixed from navy, gold and red. The mixed black then separates during shibori, rather like chomotography, leading to colored halos. The mixed fiber reactive black might be beautiful in an immersion dyebath, or in direct application but they give us trouble in shibori. But there tend to be several mixed blacks and each may be designed for a specfic application process; the pad-batch black might be different than a immersion bath black. Fiber reactive dyes also work on silk (standard processing) and so you might find a silk black and a cotton black (here there are 8 blacks/greys for the old fiber reactive dyes, Procion MX).

While I was out buying notions to finish up the outfits for Artwear in Motion I saw some Dylon dye, black that had worked so well for Neki. So I am now the proud owner of 1.75 oz. of #12 black. From the package I learned it contains trisodium phosphate and reactive black 5. I suspect that this means it contains one dye that is black, not a muixture of dyes. I can't wait to try it on cotton!

Posted by Karren at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)