I recieved these questions in an email.  A better way to ask a question is to post them as a comment.  But here are the questions and my answers:

My 1st question regards the type string vs. the type fabric to use on the poles. Do you have a favorite string you use consistently with many fabrics with good results? (good resist?). Or do you have different strings for different fabric types? I tried the arashi before (a few years back) with good results so I was expecting the same (good results) when I dyed fabrics last week (first time in four years) but was met with exceptionally poor results (no or very faint resist marks) on a couple of the fabrics. My main dissappointment was a piece of silk organza that I spent a LOT of time pleating up before I wrapped it. I was expecting it (the organza) to be tougher to resist (than the heavier silks), but I at least thought I would see lines....  I guess this question would extend itself to the stitched-resist techniques too?  Do you have a favorite thread you use on many different fabrics? Or do you use different stitching treads for different fabrics? (my other problem was my lack of notes on the thread types I used. I know to and took good notes for the dye, time, techniques, etc. but forgot to write down what type of thread I used on each pole!).

I use different strings for doing arashi because they give different effects, but all of them work.  Here are some I have in my studio today that I have used:

The one I used the most is the cotton rug warp, it is cheap and I use it for my production work.  I don't think that the string that you use has anything thing to do with the sucess of the resists.  The tension does and so does the type of cloth.  Organza is both a porous  and stiff cloth; these can make it hard to resist.  We dampen the organza to soften it before we push.

Stitched resists are very dependent on the fabric; I've never seen any effect of the thread.  I do want the thread to be strong and not break when I gather it up tightly.  I also want it to slip though the cloth easily but beeswax, Thread Heaven ot other  thread lubricant are helpful. 

Remember that all resists are created by compressing the cloth.  On the pole the string compresses the cloth against the pole; the tighter the tension as you wrap the more the compression.  It is easy to lose all the tension when you stop wrapping to push, you must keep the tension on the string while you are pushing and as you restart wrapping.  The thicker and spongeier the cloth the easier it is to compress.  Not all fabrics will work with all techniques.  In stitching the cloth presses against itself right around the thread.  A fabric that is dense, such as fuji broadcloth works well.  Alternatively a very long line of stitching compresses the cloth more than a a short line of stitches.

2. My second question has to do with the silicone spray you put on the poles. Is there any other product (other than spray silicone) that you might recommend for me to try that would have less fumes. My husband is extremely sensitive to the fumes (even though we applied it outside and later brought the poles inside to wrap). He thought he was going to have to go to the hospital he had such a bad reaction to the smell. So I tried to do the arashi this time without it (which turned out to be a LOT more difficult and I believe probably attributed to the faint/nonexistant resist lines - because I had to let off on the tension a little bit to be able to "scrunch" up the fabric). Can you think of anything that I could try that wouldn't affect the fabric/dye and still allow me to get the tension on the string I need without the fumes?

I use a silicone srpay for use with fabrics, no staining.  I spray outdoors, wait a minute wipe it off then bring it inside.  My pole have a nice layer built up and I don't need to spray everytime. Silicone also comes as a liquid, not in a spray dispenser.

I used to work without it.  The less you wrap the easier it is to push.  So if you normally wrap 6" before pushing, if you only wrap 4" and then push it will be much easier.  If you have issues with the silicone spray you will have to experiment with other lubricants to see what is acceptable to you.

Posted by Karren at 01:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

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)

Need dots to go with your Maki-age?

Neki, over at Movable Feast, has posted a tutorial on how to make the tiny dots, kanoko in Japanese.  These dots occur in all tie-dye that I have seen: Japanese. Chinese, Indian, Ancient Andean, African.

Posted by Karren at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Multicolored ground

It doesn't take long for an artist applying color with a brush, even a sponge brush, to start using more colors. So here is a ground I painted for the samples for the hygragena jackets.

Using this as The starting point; I stitched and bound the motifs and dyed the cloth the lavender grey I've been using.

These look different from the pink ones.  But the process can be complicated even more by discharging before dying the grey.  The grey covers the colors well, you can't see the mulicolored ground under the grey so why bother.  Discharge halos !  Discharge always penetrates farther than the dye does leaving little bands with no added color where you can see the discharge color---HALOS. The motif I chose as the icon for this challenge was discharged and has distinct halos making the pattern within the motif even more mysterious.

 Maki-age is very similar to capped motifs, where the motif is covered with plastic instead of bound, and I tried both in this test. The  three-step process (we haven't gotten to the 12-step one yet)  as follows:

Stitch and bind the motifs on the mutlicolored ground. Soak. Discharge.

Then dye.

Then carefully remove all the threads. My favorite tool for this is a seam ripper.

Here is another piece from Pat Freiert that shows a three-step process.

The challenge

I'm just thrilled with the work and learning that is going on among the 15 participants in the challenge and visible at the  Maki-age Shibori Challenge Flickr group. There is still time to join us.  Just try a piece this month and upload a picture before Halloween is over.

Posted by Karren at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Indigo and white is a classic color combination that I love and the Japanese adore.  But it is not right for all situtations.  Sometimes we just need another color.  White, because of its extreme value ( or luminosity ) only works in few combination; dark indigo and white, black and white and red and white.  Previously I have immersion dyed the whole cloth before doing the maki-age resists and dyeing with the following results:

.

Here the silk noil gauze was immersion dyed with Lanaset dyes a pinky beige and then dyed again in the lavender grey giving me very tight control over the colors.

In my experience with dyeing, immersion dyeing is my favorite for the quality of the color achieved.  It gives a kind of stained glass quality to the color that I thinks comes from the total penetration of the dye into the fiber.  If you cut a fiber that has been dyed and look at the  cross section thus the color goes all the way through.  This is the most easily observed in china silk that is translucent.  Anyhow I like these colors that are achieved by immersion dyeing.

Direct application such as painting on thickened dyes, even the same ones, give whimpy colors to my eyes.  I tried the so called silk paints such as Pebeo Soie testing the theory that these are more concentrated/better designed for this application.  Before and after steaming, I still precieve the colors as whimpy; kind of chalky more like the colors of tempera paint than stained glass.  Silk painters use a lot of crepe de chine which has a very high surface area and gives richer color.  So I think that these are only binding to the surface of the fiber not penetrating all the way through. 

In my experimentation I have found one method that I think gives  richer colors and that is using foam to hold the dye.  The dye stock and acid are mixed into the the foam, usually shaving cream.  This holds the dye and you can see it transfer from the foam to the fabric.  This is a technique used in industry when dyeing things they don't want to get sopping wet, such as carpet and ties.  So here are some process pictures from samples I made last spring .

Here is the thin noil, you can see the grey table top through it, marked with motifs and some dots for kanoko bindings.  I used a dressmakers marking pen that uses a fugative dye.  The purple lines disappear the first time it gets wet.

Next the perimeter of each motif is stitched with a running stitch.  You can see the large knots and long tails  on each motif.  The dots have been bound, they will remain white.

Then I mixed the dye stock and acid into the shaving cream.  The pink foam was daubed on the dry cloth inside the motifs.  Notice how the dye is moving from the foam to the fiber and the foam turns white.  more can be applied if you want a more intense color.

When the color value, actually darker since it is now damp, you want is achieved, let the foam dissipate and then gather the stitches.  Then bind the gathered motif.  Binding damp cloth gives a lot of compression, you can feel how hard the bound part is.  When the binding is complete, the cloth is soaked and then dyed in a dark lavender grey immersion dye bath.  Any pink dye outside the motif will come off in the soaking or the intial dye bath, then the heat of the immersion dye bath will set the remaining pink.

Sometime we percieve that the resists are just the strings.  Here you can clearly see pink areas that are not just under the strings.  The cloth is just so tightly compressed that the dye could not penetrate. Other parts such as the tips are lose and they did dye the darker color.  

Careful removal of the threads  was sucessfull, and the design has white dots, pink motifs and a on a grey ground.  This method of spot dyeing opens  many color options for magi-age.

Posted by Karren at 01:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

These are examples I found on the web:

from Laura but made in Arimatsu Japan.

All of these last photos were made in a Workshop in Coupville this summer. 

Posted by Karren at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not happy with these:

These are two Maki-age samples that I made for my jackets last winter.  Thery are done on a gauzy silk noil.  It was dyed with Lanaset dyes the neutral color I call Rose-gold  after the metal.  Then I stitched and bound my shapes and dyed it a grey in a Lanaset immersion bath.  Now I have pink and lavender blue (having to do with the juxtaposition of the two neutral colors).  Most of the maki-age we have seen is just one color, such as indigo, on white/natural.  By adding a color before making the resists a degree of complexity has been added to the design.  Also I find white a hard color to work with and make interesting combinations since no other color has a similar value (luminosisty).  I do like dk. indigo and white but not all the time.

Inspecting of the motifs, one can see the needle holes  near the bottom edge of the right motif and the stitch resist at the edge is well defined.  However the edges of the motif, espcially at the arrows  there are areas where the grey dye did not penetrate well.    The two motifs are less than an inch apart and when both motifs are gathered  the cloth in this area is all bunched together and yet it is supposed to dye.   To get the dye to penetrate well in these jammed up places you have to work the cloth in the dyebath.  That means that while dyeing, the sooner the better, put on your gloves, put your hands in the dyebath and move that cloth around, pushing up down parts with your fingers, and down parts up.  Swish it around in the dyepot and then do it again, rearranging the gathers that have formed in the background.  My goal is to get the grey right up to the resists created by the stitches.  This gives the best definition to the stitches to my eye.

In the lower left corner there is an unintentional tail on the motif.  WhenI tied the gathering stiches I must have caught a little bit of cloth here that then got bound up.  I've gotten in the habit of checking as I gather and after that all the cloth that should be up in the poof is up and the rest is down.   It is quite common for a little bit of cloth that should be up to stick a little toe down and visa versa.  Anyone who has sewn a gathered skirt to a waistband knows how easy it is to have the gathers catch a bit in the wrong place.  Anyhow checking and rearranging the gathers before you tie off can help avoid this. 

I made a jacket in March  with a collection of these motifs, got the space between the motifs well dyed and no little bits of cloth in the wrong position and then cutting the threads I got this

.

  a tiny, tiny hole.  A hole none the less!

Posted by Karren at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

 Maki-age combined with spot-dyeing

Here is a Japanese piece with maki-age (radishes?), ori-nui (lines) and spot dyeing.  Nice, eh?  From Narablog where you can see a larger image. 

Posted by Karren at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Tutorial at Tobasign

Tobasign , a company that sells dyes in Europe, has a 17 photo tutorial of how to do Maki-age. Here is a sampling of the very clear photos:

The tutorial is 17 clear pictures at the TobaSign site with many languages, but you don't need words to understand the pictures.  The dyeing part is specific for their dyes, which appear to be a liquid fiber reactive dyes (low temp., salt and fixer later).  You can change the dyeing part for the dyes you are using.

Posted by Karren at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Previously I have discussed how to make Chinese Butterflies, Part 1, Part 2, and some of the limitations about fabric and size. Here is a link to watch a video of a Chinese maker, LUI DA PAO, making butterflies in indigo.

Posted by Karren at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is a detail of a yukata that was posted on the shibori Flickr pool by narablog.com. It is just indigo on white (or the natural color of the cloth. It has generated quite a bit of interesting technical discussion about how it was made in the comments at Flickr. The keystone in the discusion in another piece of cloth of posted by narablog.com. It appears the this piece was pole wrapped with precision twice and indigo dyed the same shade each time. Try it, it will make you feel humble.

Narablog has explained that this is cotton, handspun and handwoven. Hand spinning takes about 5 times as long as hand weaving. This is extremely labor intensive (but made before we had labor saving devices and longer lives). The effect can best be seen in a larger view of the yukata.

One sees darker patches in the blue across the cloth caused by tiny variations in the spacing of the arashi shibori lines that in the detail seem impossibly perfect. This color blue that fades in and out is much more like the colors I see in nature. Reminds me of the flight of a flock of birds or the sound of cicadids in the August afternoon. Seldom does nature produce a large expanse of uniform color. To me this is the kind of beauty and patterns I see in nature and aspire to create.

Todays questions are different:
Is the beauty worth the time?
Can you get the same effect faster, cheaper?
What's next?

Posted by Karren at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is a maki-age hankie that a student of mine bought in Japan and brought to a class where I photographed it. Lovely.

If you have been following this blog you have seen the technique if not the name. I have seen the Japanese name as both makiage and maki-age, or pattern within a motif. I have also seen maki-nui, maki zome, kawamaki, bo maki ( bo means pole). Maki-nui is a stitching technique with overcast stitches, thus I have an idea what the Japanese maki means to wind or bind.
I have referred to this technique as stitched and bound.
I showed how I did this when I was doing the Hydrangea Jacket--process. Further instruction are in by book, Shibori: creating color and texture on silk. On this blog you can see some at
samples, jacket . The Chinese use this technique extensively.

The Chinese are also making much of the Japanese style shibori these days. It ia a general consenses that the crafts are disappearing in Japan too. Their young people are not interested in time consuming training and the cost of labor is high. John Marshall said to me to buy handcrafted Japanese textiles now; they are cheap and disappearing.

Posted by Karren at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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)

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)

This is the book, in Japanese, that was the starting point for a lot of the recent exploration. I don't read Japanese, but there is a enough info to be useful. The ISBN 4-915374-41-6 should get the book. It is all indigo on cotton. I will share a few bits of the book so that you can decided if you want it.

I know of two Japanese bookstores in the US, one in Japan Town in SF and one in Rockefeller Center in NYC. I called the one in SF and they sent it to me.

Posted by Karren at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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)

Back when I was blogging about itajimeI found this image on the internet:

Pretty spectacular! Referred to as a snowflake design. Looks like indigo on natural cotton. But how was it made?

By studing the design you can see how it was folded. The first fold I see is bringing a corner to the center, until the centers of the snowflakes coincide, like so

followed by bringing the other corners to the center. Now all the snowflake motifs are stacked up The piece is now 5 layers thick and looks like this:

It apperars to me that this square was folded to create the spokes. I'll fold it in half

And then in half again.

Now I would bring the corners together

And one more fold

.

And then the template would be shaped thus:

Easy, Straight forward but we have 80 layers of cloth and they are NOT fan folded. How can you dye 80 layers of cloth, no matter how thin, with indigo. Indigo does not penetrate very far, so it is ideal for beginner shibori. Even a loose fold ia a resist for indigo. How can we over ride this and get all the layers colored? Returning to the topmost image of the snowflakes they all look well dyed, there are no pale copies here.

Posted by Karren at 08:29 AM | 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)

I had a question on how to pleat at home.and the answer is that there are many ways. There are also many kinds of pleats, and sometimes the ways you make them is different.

PLEAT: Fold of fabric, folded back upon itself so that the pleat is comprised of three layers; occurs vertically only. Pleats may be partially stitched or pressed down. Kinds of pleats include: knife pleats, box pleats, inverted pleats, and accordion pleats.

Pleating can be as simple as folding the cloth back and forth several times. This is a basic technique used in wearing a sari or a kilt.

For an entertaining kilt pleating visit here, I wonder how he would get dressed in a hurry .

I have already discussed making this kind of pleat with a smocking pleater. This is a fav of shibori dyers because it inserts a thread that can be used to gather and compress the cloth.

Tie-dyers also form small pleats with their fingers.

This is also how many ethnic costumes are pleated such an the Hmong or Miao.

I most often make this style pleat by pole wrapping.

SKIRT or KNIFE PLEATS

These are often made from a pattern or by measuring, marking and basting. This gives the most accurate pleats and they do not all have to be the same or even the same at the top and bottom. Think of pleated skirts. The shape garment is formed by varying the size of the pleat , widest at the waist, narrower over the hips. Of course, part of these pleats are stitched down. These same style pleat can be formed with a
Pleater Boards

A pleater board is paper/cloth device that you use to tuck the cloth into and then iron them. Here are some instructions on how to use a pleater board. I always put a tape on the back of the cloth , a strip on each side, before removing it from the board. You can then machine baste the pleats in place before removing the tape. You can buy one here. My experience is these board are good for small pieces only, the size of the board. Taking the pleated piece out and getting it perfectly lined up to do a second segment was a less than satisfactory endeavor. Also you have to watch the alignment of the cloth like a hawk, or your pleated piece is a trapazoid not a rectangle. Every thing has is use but you scrafice control when you go to a pleater board.

Yet to come-- attachments for the sewing machine that pleat.

Posted by Karren at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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)

Maureen writes about how she did the mokume in the second picture in the mokume entry

I thought you'd get a kick out of knowing I used my old Bernina 801 Sport sewing machine to do the gathering stitches. It was done with a widely spaced gathering stitch, ~3/4 inch long. I just added this photo to show the page in the machine manual giving directions on using the Bernina Magic Needle [it has 2 eye-holes] to achieve a widely spaced gathering stitch. You use either a blind stitch or ziz-zag stitch, thread the needle in the upper eye and the needle picks up the bobbin thread only when it swings to the far left position. I now own a Bernina 1530, which has built in a very long basting stitch. I can create the same Mokume pattern using a normal needle, thank god!

Posted by Karren at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mokume is a traditional Japanese design that is often translated as wood grain.

This image is from World Shibori Network., look under techniques.

This is a very simple technique; the tools required are a needle and thread and maybe a marker. Parallel rows of hand stitching are gathered tightly before dyeing. There is a simple tutorial at tobasign.com.

Now what I like about this technique for flat patterning is how the lines that are formed from dye on the top of the gathers sort of wander to and fro. This is because the stitches in each line of stitching do not line up precisely. If you wanted them to line up precisely you would mark a series of dots and go down in one and up in the next.Here is an indigo piece from the Flickr pool.

The first thing novices ask me is if they can use the sewing machine. Of course, they can use a sewing machine but they won’t get mokume patterns. This has to do with how the stitches are made. In hand stitching you have one thread and the needle carries it up and down through the cloth, when you pull it tight the cloth undulates.

A sewing machine makes the stitches with two threads and when you gather it the cloth can only make tiny undulations inside the thread cages. The results are more about the resists formed by the thread.

There is a smocking machine that pleats like the hand stitching, with one thread. Here is one I have, see more at the Sewing Studio.

It has many needles that all pierce the cloth at exactly the same point. Here is a piece done with a smocking machine with one needle missing.

Do you think it is as boring as I do?

Jane Steinberg makes textured silk scarves and shawls using mokume. The texture is less dramatic in the difference between hand stitched and smocking machine but she does it by hand and you can read about it here. This is Jane's mokume patterning---lovely, eh?

Posted by Karren at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

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)

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)