Itajime Shibori and Painting on Silk Scarves with Dyes

Yesterday I dyed two silk scarves.  On one I used Itajime techniques.  Below is the picture of it clamped before applying the dyes.

Here is the other scarf that I painted.

Here they are after washing.

Really like this one!

 I might do another layer on this one.  It has lovely fall colors but might need more.

Arte de Tiza

Yesterday, 21 of my students showed up at the Paso Robles city park to create art

 for the annual Arte de Tiza.  Here's some of the best ones.

 This is Liz's who ended up winning 1st place for the middle school division.

 I'm leaving this one upside-down, because it looks better that way for

 some reason due to the angle of the photo.  It's done by a former student of mine.

 This one was by a group from the Paso Robles Arts Foundation.

More Shibori

I'm trying to find a little time each week for surface design on fabric.  It helps me keep a better balance in my life, since returning to work.  Yesterday I did two pieces, both very simple. One was on a small piece of fabric, about 18 x 18 inches, using Te-kumo shibori technique.  The English translation is "hand-bound spiderweb."  I used the directions in the Shibori Book by Wada, Rice and Barton as mentioned in last week's post. There's an endless quantity of techniques to learn in that book. Instead of binding with string, I used rubber bands.  I inserted a chopstick into the fabric and wrapped rubber bands tightly a round the first three or inches, then removed the chopstick.  I repeated it  throughout the fabric.  Next I soaked it in the soda ash, then dyed it using yellow, orange, red, and black.

The other piece I did was a spiral wrapped shirt using red on one side with a little bit of black and black on the other side with a little bit of red.

Komasu Shibori

It was great to have a three day weekend. Caught up on schoolwork, gardening, cleaning and then had time for some fun with dyeing, specifically Komasu Shibori. This is a Japanese resist dye method using stitching and tying gathered fabric together. It's explained in detail in the Shibori bible, otherwise known as, Shibori, The Inventive Art of Japanese Shaped Resist Dyeing by Yoshiko Wada, Mary Rice, and Jane Barton.

I folded the fabric in half and stitched as shown above, using strong button thread.

I gathered the stitching together tightly and wrapped the fabric from inside each triangular area.

The top photo is the whole piece, approximately fat quarter size. Below is a close up. 

I used Lemon Yellow, Deep Orange, Emerald Green, Chineese Red and Black