Folk Fibers Blog / japanese
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Nui Shibori: Stitch Resist
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I made this stitched resist rabbit many years ago, but I still love it so. Nui shibori includes stitched shibori. A simple running stitch is used on the cloth then pulled tight to gather the cloth before submerging in a dye pot. Stitching affords flexibility and control to create designs of great variety, delicate or bold, simple or complex, pictorial or abstract. This technique allows for greater control of the pattern and greater variety of pattern, but it is much more time consuming. mokume shibori also known as woodgrain
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SHIBORI
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I was introduced to shibori dye methods in college while taking the history of fabric class in the fibers dept at scad. Recently I have been revisiting the techniques. keeping an active indigo dye pot (along a slew of others) at my fingertips promotes the constant activity of testing and experimenting with cloth and color. I love resist dying and when I started studying shibori I found it was just the right sort of sophistication and historical context I was looking for in what I knew before as tie-dye. I don't see the resist dye techniques entering into the crafting of my quilts, for now...
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My Indigo Journey Begins
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"Don't rush, life is long and there's no race to be the first to do anything with indigo, it's all been done for thousands of years. The big question is how do you make it your own, and that takes years and years." -Rowland Ricketts This year I have immersed myself in learning first-hand the age-old-traditions of growing, dying, and processing Indigo. Due to my years of experience in working on organic vegetable farms, I was able to start confident and strong with growing and harvesting Indigo; but then came the question of how to process indigo, meaning getting color from the plant onto fabric?...
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SASHIKO
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I feel in love with quilting by virtue of sashiko. When I hand quilt I always use shashiko thread for durability and function, but most of all because of the beautiful history that defines it. Sashiko is a Japanese hand-stitiching technique, traditionally used by fisherman and farmers to repair holes in fabric. The plain-stitch technique originates from the working class and remote communities. It evolved from the need to protect, or mend, clothing and fabric. The basic technique is a small running stitch that follows the grain of the fabric, whereby horizontal rows of stitches are considered stronger than vertical rows. While the geometric...