Monday, October 5, 2009

Shibori'd Out

for our first assignment in my print II class we learned the art of shibori, a resist dyeing technique that is similar to tye-dye. for this project we had to create at least 20 designs using the four techniques of shibori - planghi (wrapping), itajime (clamping), tritik (stitch) and arashi (tube wrapping). it was so much fun, i really enjoyed doing shibori but now we are moving on to batik designs. this whole shibori project took about a month to do.
planghi technique. for this particular piece i pleated the fabric and wrapped monofilament around it, throwing metal washers in the folds of the pleats to create the diamond shapes in the design.
arashi shibori. since this fabric was longer, i folded it in half and wrapped it around a pvc pipe, then wrapped monofilament around it to hold it in place. after wrapping, i swished the fabric to the end of the tube so it bunched together allowing for the color removing chemicals (thiox) to penetrate inside the folds to create this beautiful ripple.
tritik shibori. tritik is more of a pain to do because to stitching takes a much longer time then wrapping and clamping. for this particular piece i pleated the fabric diagonally and simply stitched a line in the center. once it unfolds, the line was repeated throughout the pleating, creating this lovely design. i ombred the fabric in orange dye for a more dynamic pattern.
itajime shibori. for this piece i folded the fabric in half and then in triangles. i placed a large metal "L" bracket on the top and on the bottom of the bunch and clamped them in place. after removing the color in thiox i then went back in and placed a large square metal square on top of the bunch and placed it back in the thiox to remove even more of the color, while saving the original purple color of the fabric and the color underneath the metal square.