Lately my time has been taken up by work, school and practicing textile design. Currently I'm focusing on shibori which, in layman's terms, is basically the Japanese version of tie dye but elevated. Right now I've been practicing my itajime shibori which is a technique where you fold pieces of fabrics and clamp them prior to dyeing. Clamping the pieces using wooden or acrylic blocks allows parts of the fabric to resist the dye and remain white. I've done shibori work before with an indigo vat but it was a challenge, at first, trying it out with procion dyes. Patience is key and patience isn't exactly something I'm well known for.
It's a fun experiment and I finally managed to figure out the best way to achieve a good deep black in a cold dye bath. Typically any kind of black dye needs a hot bath but after a couple (well, more than a couple) small projects I've managed to achieve a blue tinged black that I'm totally in love with. I've also managed to figure out how to get crisp white resists against my dyes. The semi faded look is great with natural indigo but I really disliked how it looked against my black and amethyst shades.
Now that project after itajime project is coming out how I want them to it's time to try out the arashi (pole wrapping) method!
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| (the projects above are all available in my shop right now) |
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