Sunday, June 30, 2019

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. 




Sunday, June 23, 2019

Itajime Revisited

Having the time of my life playing around with Itajime, which is the Japanese technique
 for creating patterns on fabric through folding, clamping, and /or binding it followed by dyeing.

This piece was previously dyed. I accordion folded it,


 then folded it another way tying rubber bands to secure the folds.


Then squeezed darker colored dyes into it.


Below is another piece accordion folded and secured, ready for dyeing.



Below is a picture of the three pieces with the dye applied and in the batching stage.


 And here are the other two finished pieces.







Sunday, June 16, 2019

Shibori in the Studio with Friends

Yesterday, I had my Cutting Edge Fiber Arts over to my barn studio for our monthly meeting.
 After we were done with the business portion of the meeting we got to play with shibori techniques. I demonstrated Itajime, Arashi, and stitched shibori. 
 Sara, one of the other members demonstrated using rope to create a honeycomb pattern. 
Everyone left with at least one piece of shibori dyed fabric
 which needed to be batched and rinsed out at home.
 I can't wait to see how everyone's turned out.







Below is my Stitched Resist piece. On the top warm colored section,  I used Hishaki-nui stitching, where you fold the fabric to create symmetrical stitched shapes, in my case circles.
 I did three rows of them.
Below, in the blue area is Ori-nui, which is stitching through two layers that are folded.
The bottom area is  created through tying thread tightly around beads. 
I think I need to add something more in that section.



Below is my Honeycomb Patterned piece. Thanks for showing us this technique Sara.



Monday, June 10, 2019

More Wearables Dyeing Fun

This was a great cotton top which had a layer of lace on top, 
 which I bought at a thrift store in San Luis Obispo. 
I just scrunched it up into lots of mountains and valleys, and squirted dyes into it. 



Sunday, June 2, 2019

Arashi T Shirt Over-Dyeing

I had some friends over  to dye shirts in the  Studio-Barn yesterday. As part of demonstrating the washing out portion of working with procion dyes,  I like to have something
 that is dyed, cured (or batched) and  ready to be rinsed and washed.
 I over-dyed a cotton shirt from Dharma Trading Company that I originally dyed in 2015.  


Below is the shirt prior to over-dyeing.  I am very pleased with how it turned out.
 I think you get some really interesting layers of patterns, values and colors when you over-dye.



Tuesday, May 28, 2019

More Arashi Shibori

I had lots of fun yesterday in my new studio playing around with dyes
 creating layers of colors and patterns. 


First Layer


Pole-wrapped


Drying outside on the clothesline



Closeup





Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Polymer Clay Buttons for Pieced and Quilted Sweatshirt Jacket

Not being able to find appropriate buttons for my sweatshirt makeover jacket, I pulled out my polymer clay materials and tools and got to work.


Here's my pasta machine that I use to help condition the clay and other tools.


Here's the buttons which still need either holes or a button shank glued to them.


Here the buttons are on the jacket. I like how all of them look except for the top one. I don't like how it looks on that particular piece of fabric. I'm either going to make a different button or four different buttons or flip the buttons to the other side. Let me know what you think by commenting below.