Thursday, April 16, 2015

Adventures in Shibori

Shibori pieces fascinate me!

What is Shibori?

Shibori is traditionally dyed with indigo 

but when I first started to dyed fabrics 

several years ago; I experimented with 

setacolors paints instead.

Hardly anyone was doing that at the time;

now a lot of people are making


beautiful colored shibori pieces.

I have been making Shibori pieces on and off 

for a couple of years now.

Trying different experiments and asking 

myself "What if" - going beyond

the traditional.  Sometimes making a 

traditional piece but the a twist.

And twist I did with this Arashi shibori.



(This is one of my first)

Which is basically fabric wrapped

around a pole but you can use a 

PVC pipe.

The way I did the pole wrap about

to experiment with is - I hand 

sewed runny stitches horizontally 

every couple of inches and then

gathered them  but not too tight.

I then wet the fabric and wrapped around 

the pipe twisting as I went around.

I then applied the paint with one of 

those sponge brushes. Waited until it

dried and then removed the fabric.




I was pleasantly surprised with the

results!

Lately I've been doing another "What If"

experiment 



again, I used Arashi shibori technique.

I call it Shibori Sun and it's done

in pastels - I love the way this one

turned out!

Then I used a larger piece of fabric



and made this "Blue Moon" shibori piece.

I'm very happy with both of the results!