New Itajime and Arashi Shibori Fabrics and Shirt

Here are some new dyed fabrics and a shirt I made 

 with a fun group of women, part of the Sew Whatz group,  in the studio barn on Saturday.

This is a T-Shirt I over-dyed using the Arashi Shibori technique. It had been previously ice-dyed but needed another layer of pattern to tie it all together into a more cohesive design.

This is an example of the honeycomb technique.

To learn more about that technique, see my post previous to this one. 

I like the water-like texture in these honeycomb pieces.

I used hexagon shaped tiles to create this clamped resist piece shown above.

I think it resembles glowing bugs with long antennae and legs.

Above is an example of stitched resist know as Komasu Shibori.

The one above is folded just like the stitched one above it, 

but you use only rubber bands

 to create the patterns.  I like it quite a bit and it's easier.

For the one above I used two balsa wood cut outs of a maple leaf  I bought at Michaels, clamped together with fabric in-between them. 

The piece above was accordion folded and held together with rubber bands. 

It's done on linen.

New Shibori Shirt

I made a new Shibori shirt last week using itajime techniques. 

I accordion folded the shirt and secured the folds with rubber bands on the lower half. 

 On the upper half did a lot of scrunching and secured those with rubber bands also

 as you can see in the picture below.

Next I applied the dyes and let it batch overnight.

Here's my new shirt. 

More Itajime

Once your dyes are all made up and in squirt bottles, the dyeing goes very fast.

 Having done that about a month ago or so, it didn't take me very long to put together a few new pieces. Having way too much fun with this technique.

Fabric was accordion folded and tied to the PVC  piece at an angle to create chevron stripes.

Below is the resulting fabric.

Itajime  using chopsticks and washers.

Itajime using larger sticks. Prior to putting those on, I used large washers clamped to the fabric to create a circular design underneath that you see in the finished piece.

 For this one, I accordion folded the fabric, wound it around a spool using rubber bands

 to secure in and drizzled dye on the folded edges.

Planning New Shibori Quilt

This is what I sewed together late last night, thinking it was pretty good. 

 

This morning it didn't look as exciting as it did last night, so I did this:

 

Then I pinned up this variation:

Followed by this last variation:

 

So if you are looking at this, please give me some feedback as to what you think is most interesting, 1, 2, 3 or 4.  I'm leaning towards 3 or 4.

 

On the Design Wall Now

Been very busy finishing up Christmas 'stuff', like making cookies, cookie dough for sugar cookies, wrapping presents, blah, blah, blah.  Yesterday I spent a couple of hours cleaning and sorting in my studio.  It was a huge mess! Found all sorts of buried treasure.  Rediscovered and remembered at least three or four UFOs that I want to continue working on and put away some that I have lost interest in.  Picked out some fabrics to jumpstart my next two quilts, one being in reds, greens, blacks and yellow and the other the same except interchanging the red for the orange.

On the far left is an arashi shibori.  There are three that are marbled fabrics, in yellow, orange and blacks with circular motifs, and the remaining ones are itajime fabrics.

I like having projects in multiple stages, incubation, physically putting pieces together and finishing up, i.e., quilting or embroidering, in this case.

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.

Around the World Blog Hop and New Shibori and Tie-dyed Baseball Caps, Part Deux

Judy Sail, whose blog I have been following regularly for years,  kindly invited me to participate in the "Around the World Blog Hop."  She does some wonderful dyeing, crocheting, scarves, etc.  Check out her blog here .

Many fiber artists are participating in this blog hop through answering 4 basic questions about their art.  So here we go:

1.  What am I working on?   This past weekend I played around with  doing some more over-dyeing using shibori techniques.  This was a piece that I previously clamped and dyed, using accordion folding with large metal washers and small tiles.  I refolded it in one direction, then another , put rubber bands around it and squeezed black dye into the folded edges.  I'm liking the complex layers of pattern and design.

Below is a closeup.

Below is an overdyed pink and orange ice dyed print, on which I used a shibori technique

 called capping.  

And recently, I've started tie-dyeing a few hats, just because.

Here's the results from Sunday's experiment, which didn't turn out as well as I hoped it would, 

but it's ok. I either needed to stitch a more simplified leaf or do 2 to 3 rows of stitching around the maple leaf, so the shape would show up better.

2.   How does my work differ from others of its genre? I have been fortunate enough to take workshops from a lot of great teachers, Jeanette de Nicolas Meyer, Caryl Bryer Fallert, Rosalie Dace, Melody Johnson, Sandy Cummings and am currently taking an online class through Craftsy from Jane Dunnewold.  I love learning new techniques but do not want my finished work to resemble theirs.  I try to allow the fabric to dictate the direction of the design and that's where the focus is, like in this quilt. Although this quilt has mark making which I've learned in a variety of classes, it is combined with lots of free-hand embroidery which I've enjoyed doing since I was 16.

3.  Why do I write/create what I do?  Because I have to.  It is what makes me tick and keeps me sane.  With teaching art full time in a middle school, I really have to make a conscious effort to carve out time for my own creating.  I'm trying to find two to three hours every weekend, and trying to hang in there until summer, when I'll have more time to truly experiment. 

4.  How does my writing/creating process work?  This will be my 116th post.  I started my blog shortly after getting an article on Itajime Shibori published in Quilting Arts (December/January 2012/13).  I'm a teacher at heart and like to share with others my experiments since I have learned so much from visiting other artists' websites.  Hopefully what I do will inspire someone else to play around with creating fabrics.  Blogging is also a great way to keep an art journal and chronicle my work for myself.  Someone whose blog has inspired me is Linda McLaughlin, so I am inviting her to join in the blog hop.  I've been especially enjoying looking at her fabulous hand-stitching in her weekly leaf series. Her blog is "Notes from Studio B"  and you can check out her lovely work here .

Itajime Shibori Over-dyed and Batik with Discharge

Below is an overdyed itajime piece.  Here is the original fabric.  I liked it but felt it needed more complexity.

So I accordion foldeded it, used two round coasters clamped together and squirted yellow, orange, red and black carefully and strategically around the coasters. 

Closeup below

Below is a piece that was batiked and became very dark.  Sorry, I couldn't find a picture of the original.  I shibori discharged it using bleach/water in a 50/50 mix.