Origami Shibori
3 July 2007
When I did the recent workshop on Origami shibori with Pat Freiert in St Peter MN the first piece I did was a hemmed thin cotton square she gave us, about 18″. She had Procion MX dyes for us to work with.
This is a classic orgami fold: bring all the corners to center.
Fold all four corners in, and have a new smaller square that is 5 layers.
Repeat the same folding pattern, bringing the 4 corners to the center,
So now there are 10 layers of cloth.
But you can see that it was folded one more time; same fold, bring all the corners to the center.
So now there are 20 layers and a small square shape.
A chop stick was stuck in the middle of the square and then tied with string much like and umbrella. It was dyed in a aqua immersion dyebath, and then in a purple one. The piece was messaged in the dye bath, before the soda ash was added, to encourage penetration.
The final piece has 13 motifs but some are definitely paler than others. Procion MX is a dye that penetrates deeply but even so the color is not even on all motifs. Next I’ll use a very open weave structure to allow more penetration.
3 July 2007 at 9:03 AM
loving all the instructions here, and liking how the center motif came out darker actually.
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3 July 2007 at 9:48 AM
Was that you Karren who left a message in my blog?
link is fixed.
thnx for noticing(and stopping by)
neki desu
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3 July 2007 at 7:34 PM
I find the variations in depth of color far more interesting than the perfect snowflake from your previous post. And there is a certain symmetry from strong to pale to moderate intensity radially in the piece.
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4 July 2007 at 10:14 AM
when i first looked at this piece, i thought the light aqua was a halo from discharging….i like that effect. recently you used the term “puzzling out” and i think that is a perfect description of what happens when i look at shibori. it does seem like a puzzle and figuring out the steps that were taken to achieve a pattern is like solving a puzzle! some of the patterns i have yet to figure out…like those posted on narablog.
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4 July 2007 at 10:49 AM
Actually there are only 8 layers, not 20. Sorry.
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