Crane

Another stencil I cut.  This one is a bit smaller and is a stand alone motif of a crane used as a Kamon.

In Japan, Kamon were used in a similar manner as coats of arms.  A person, family, organization or company would use it as their insignia or symbol.

They're less ornate than most coats of arms and don't have so many elements combined into them.  They typically are cohesive and streamlined.  It doesn't combine different branches of the family.  To me, it is more of a stand alone emblem rather than an ancestor reference.  So I find Kamon attractive for batik work.  Some are more bold than others and a lot of them are stylized.

Another sample done on a hankie to see how the design works.  I've got quite a selection of silk hankies that I've done for practice.  I'm taking a class at the Textile Center next month that uses scraps of fabric bonded to card stock and folded into origami boxes.  I figure these would work well for that.  Then I just need to find someone to give little boxes to.  Hmm.  I took a class on making fabric Kazashi flowers earlier this month.  The hankie wouldn't work as well for that since they need more pieces of fabric.  Or at least larger pieces than I can get to fold.  My fingers aren't as agile as they would need to be for that.

Circles

Look, different colors.

I really like how bronze looks on silk. It doesn't have much color shifting either, it's pretty consistent.
The stitching on the bronze one is Miru Shibori. Instead of using one thread to go the length of the fabric and connecting all of the circles, I stitched and tied off each half circle (the fabric was folded in half) independently. You can see how much clearer the circles are at the center.



Compare the bronze one to the purple sample. The stitching where they're touching isn't as distinct as it is at the outside. The fabric is compressed differently depending on how the threads are run. The purple is closer to Karamatsu Shibori.

Waves and circles

The stitches closer to the edge are Maki-nui Shibori. It is a kind of overcast stitch where you work the needle almost in a spiral along a fold of fabric.

The curved lines to the inside are Ori-nui Shibori. The fabric is also folded, but the stitches go through the fabric from front to back.

The circles in the middle are done similar to Karamatsu Shibori, but I only did one row of stitching rather than filling the circle. The hankie was folded in half so I only had to sew half circles using one long thread.

The curves are a bit uneven. I didn't follow my marked lines very well. But it is practice.

You can see the color shifting on this one more than the others. I even stirred this batch well.

Square and dots

Another sample I did for the class at the Textile Center. Again folded in quarters as a triangle. The spots around the outside were made by placing a small bead inside and wrapping thread around it. It is Ne-Maki or Kanoko Shibori when wrapping the thread around a tiny pinch of fabric. I’m not sure if there is a name for placing a bead inside first. A practiced Shibori artist can form very consistent dots without beads, but it can make them easier to form them for someone that hasn’t been practicing for years.



It surprised me how the dots are so square. The bead was round and when I wrapped them they looked round. But I noticed that the squares are all oriented on the bias. I’m guessing they’re square because of the how the silk stretches a bit on the bias.

The center of the hankie has a color variation across the middle. The lower right section was folded to the inside so the dye couldn’t get to it as easily. The front and back of the hankie are slightly different, but not much. I’ve also noticed color variation like this when I did a sample and it was folded in half and wasn’t stirred. It looked like the dye settled out of the water and sat on top of the fabric.

Square

The next hankie I did for the class was also folded in quarters, but squares instead of triangles. You can see the color is a little darker along the fold. It was also stitched as Mokume Shibori, with 3 rows of thread for the outer band and 4 rows for the inner band. The markers in the corners were just a few stitches.


The color for this one (and the next few samples coming) was actually lapis blue. The below picture is a batik cotton knit shirt dyed with the same color to show again how silk will dye a different color than cotton. I really like the colors both fabrics turned out. And the variation on the silk is interesting, it shifts color rather than being lighter and darker like the cotton. So it looks, to me, like it is shimmering.



I did a better job of lining up the layers so the folds didn’t affect the pattern like the previous sample.

Have I mentioned how handy silk hankies are for practice? A lot cheaper than scarves and you can play and figure out what will happen for a lot lower price.

An excellent instruction and reference book is Shibori: The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada.

Class

I took another class at the Textile Center in Minneapolis and learned a lot. I like to look at my projects and figure out why something turned out that way. Then I can either avoid it or try to do it again.

This one is a silk hankie folded in quarters and stitched in the style of Mokume Shibori. It was actually dyed with a black dye fiber reactive dye but silk takes the dye differently than cotton. I got a nice plum purple.

Most dyes are made of particles of different colors, especially black. You don't have a jar full of black particles, you have a jar full of different colors that combine to appear black. Or at least that is the hope. Black is really hard to get. Paula Burch has some great info about why this happens. There are a limited number of ‘sites’ on the silk fiber that can bond to the dye. Think of Tinker Toys and how the connectors only have 6 or 8 holes for the rods. Fiber only has so many sites to bond with dye. It can be hard to get enough of the dye to attach to the fiber.
Also, the different colors have different particle sizes. So they move through the water and into the fiber at different rates. With Shibori, this can give nice shadings and variations. You can see that the areas that were only somewhat 'resisted' are more blue than purple.

The corners of the stitching aren’t as consistent as I wanted. The inside fold slipped a bit away from the outside. If it were cotton it wouldn’t be a big deal to put in some basting stitches to hold it together better. But silk is less forgiving and the needle holes can show more.

And you can see a string coming off the label. The little labels on strings you get at the office supply store work well to mark them with what color and techniques you used. After a while, it’s hard to keep track of what you did.

Class

Yesterday I took a class at the Textile Center of MN titled "Variations on a Theme: Shibori". It was interesting and useful. There are some things that are hard to pick up from books. And talking to others gives you new ideas and ways of doing things. And of course, prompts you to use different color combinations.

The picture is of two of the scarves I, before ironing. The purple one was braided with two others and dyed. The other two I am dying a second time. One braided with itself, the other twisted.

The green one was folded and clamped between some washers. The washers keep the dye from getting to part of the fabric. you can use all sorts of shapes, as long as they don't absorb the dye or rust. They also need to be relatively rigid. How they are folded will also affect the spacing & result.