Tidal Zone

Things are turning around here, I’ve been talking with a local store owner who is opening a second store. After talking about fabric decoration (he carries a good bit of batik) he expressed interest in seeing some of the stuff I have been doing. Since most of my work lately has been straight shibori, I took some in for him to see. He was genuinely excited about the possibilities. Some of what I had (mostly fabric yardage as opposed to finished garments) to show would fit perfectly in his current store (casual spring and summer wear) but mostly he was interested in the things that would go for the new store, which he is aiming at higher end–more linens and silks. We talked today a bit about my influences and the direction I would like to take it– further exploring and combining rōketsuzome (wax resist), shibori (bound resist) and katazome (stencil pasted resist) in pieces.

So now I have to figure out how to carve a genuine studio out an apartment guest bathroom. Luckily I have some silk and linen on hand, enough for a handfull of scarves and some loose men’s shirts. With Tammy’s seamstress skills she might be able to squeeze one summer dress out of the linen as well. Of course this also means I will need to buy or rig a safe steamer for silk, invest in acid dyes and find some larger poles (and the space to use them) for arashi, not to mention get scales and fabric. Man, it’s good to have these types of problems! They’re sort of sweet worries, as opposed to sour ones!

The sample above is being used to create “ditty” bags for knitters and other craft people. It is heavy cotton canvas, 9″ wide. The circular patterns are bai shibori. Conical peaks of cloth are gathered up and roughly shaped with the fingers, then bound with sprial wrapping of thread (in this case artificial sinew) up the peak of cloth and back securing it at the base of the cone. The meandering lines are created with awase-nui shibori, a stitched technique in which two folds of fabric are created and stitched together. The stiches end up going through 4 layers of the fabric, in this case where the valley between the folds is very shallow it creates a strong central resist along with the broken resists on either side. When using the same technique to create a shippō-tsunagi pattern, the elliptical shape of the valley allows more dye penetration, often with very interesting patterning.