More diapers
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.
July 14, 2007
July 11, 2007
Origami shibori with indigo
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.
July 09, 2007
Umbellas-by the book
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.
July 07, 2007
Humble itajime
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.
July 04, 2007
Origami shibori -umbrella
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.
July 03, 2007
Origami Shibori
When I did the recent workshop on Origami shibori with Pat Freiert in St Peter MN the first piece I did was a hemmed thin cotton square she gave us, about 18". She had Procion MX dyes for us to work with.
This is a classic orgami fold: bring all the corners to center.
Fold all four corners in, and have a new smaller square that is 5 layers.
Repeat the same folding pattern, bringing the 4 corners to the center,
So now there are 10 layers of cloth.
But you can see that it was folded one more time; same fold, bring all the corners to the center.
So now there are 20 layers and a small square shape.
A chop stick was stuck in the middle of the square and then tied with string much like and umbrella. It was dyed in a aqua immersion dyebath, and then in a purple one. The piece was messaged in the dye bath, before the soda ash was added, to encourage penetration.
The final piece has 13 motifs but some are definitely paler than others. Procion MX is a dye that penetrates deeply but even so the color is not even on all motifs. Next I'll use a very open weave structure to allow more penetration.
June 30, 2007
Beyond Itajime
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.
May 30, 2007
Discharge+origami shibori
Here are some samples I made with discharge. The color is nothing special, but I was taking silk out of a box of damaged pieces, color unknown.
May 21, 2007
More
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.
May 19, 2007
WIP
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!
January 08, 2007
Itajime design
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?
January 06, 2007
More folding for itajime
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?
January 05, 2007
FOLDING FOR ITAJIME
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...
December 28, 2006
Japanese Itajime
Here are some current Japanese pieces that show the network effect.
And these are more snow flakes, all of these are on cotton cloth.
December 20, 2006
Itajime or Fold and clamp shibori-overview
This is the first of a series on itajime shibori. I will include a bit of history, techniques and contemporary work and many pictures since you have waded through so much text recently.
There is a chapter in my book, pages 78-82 on fold and clamp.
This is a very accessible technique, very simple tools are need to do it. You fold up the fiber into a packet and then squeeze the packet together while you dye it. Varaiations limited only by your mind.
Historically this technique was used to dye diapers in Japan. Diapers tend to wear out so not a lot of them remain. And these are indigo on cotton, a favorite of the Japanese but diffusion of the indigo adds to the beauty of the designs, often referred to as snowflakes.
Sometimes a template is placed on top and below the cloth packet and used to compress the packet. Here is DeAntonis doing it.
Her itajime work is straight forward and stunning. I like this Japanese design.
It looks to me like it was dyed brown, clamped and discharged to celery.
My students have typically put a round shape in the center of the packet. The results, on a good day, are may circles spaced out on the cloth.
From Laura Hunter.
The Japanese work tends to emphasize the edges of the packets that are connected into a network.
To get this kind of design the folded cloth packet and templates arethe same shape but the templates are slightly smaller than the packet so that only the egdes of the cloth are exposed to the dye.
Itajime is a technique that works in two colors such as white and indigo or many colors, or discharging and combinations. It works on many kinds of fabric and paper. It takes skill to fold acuarately for the network patterns. Clamps can be as simple as boards and rope or as fancy as wood working ones.
I like the paper that is done in this technique because it emphasizes the diffusion... soft fractal edges.
.
You can buy these kinds of Japanese papers or you can make them. Tomorrow we can do some paper together (wrapping paper?). You will need some absorbent papers (several kinds) and something to color it-- India ink, watercolors or fiber reactive dyes since paper is cellulose. Bring your origami skills.