Friday 10 April 2009

Magic Stitches Part 2

I've undone the stitching on my dry shibori pieces: this is how they are looking now, before they get washed throughly and ironed.

I used running stich in rows, running stitch on pleats and box pleats, and chevron stitch. Dye was painted on with sponge brushes once the stitches were tightly gathered. I used indigo blue, turquoise and magenta. It is interesting to see how the colours have blended, taken and been resisted on these pieces.

I want to play more with shibori/stitch resist. I have a length of pipe tightly wrapped and bound with string over calico ready for dyeing. Yesterday we bought some curtain lining/interlining fabric, which was wound onto a tube to transport home. I was surprised to find myself requesting the plastic rather than the cardboard tube offered, so I could then reuse it for this purpose. This then necessitated an explanation to my husband and to the lovely sales assistant in John Lewis, who had never heard of either this kind of dyeing nor this kind of recycling, but was intrigued. I'm wondering about clothing applications for this form of dyeing.....
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2 comments:

Tiggy Rawling said...

Great to see your samples. You have some good texture there. Love the story of the plastic pipe and John Lewis. For clothing, kimono type jackets for instance, try silk noil, silk linen, or cotton sateen. They all take the dye brilliantly. Then, of course, pre-hemmed scarves in a variety of silks - just the thing for pole wrapping. Any questions? Mail me!

arlee said...

Oh my goodness, these are lovely! I never thought of treating shibori this way---now i shall have to experiment too, especially with the residency coming up---thanks, Sweets :}