Wednesday, September 9, 2015

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

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful, Jeanne! I have not tried this stitch method... did you hand baste or machine baste? Wonder how well this would work on a t-shirt... guess I'll have to try it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Judy. I hand baste. It goes pretty quick and then I can double the button thread so it's extra strong to pull tight. I'm not sure how this would work on a t shirt. I'd be afraid of getting holes in it. Maybe if you used a ball point needle it would be ok. If you do one, pleases let me know how it goes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jeanne, I do stitched designs on t-shirts using dental floss and a large needle, and don't have any problems with holes. I will let you know if I try it.

    ReplyDelete