We have been having a little fun over at the all things shibori photo pool on flickr. Narablog posted an image recently of a shibori textile that really was intriguing and we’ve set out on a quest to see how close we can come to reproducing it.
Homespun, handwoven cotton
Unknown resist technique
Late 19C/Early 20C
So far, we have several interested parties and Lisa over at Kaizen Journey has posted her first results which are really getting somewhere. Go check it out.
A little reminder about the flickr group. Anyone can go there and see the photos that have been added to the pool and make comments. Only members of the pool can see and participate in the pool’s discussions. If you want to join the pool, just click on the “join this group” link. Please read the rules and know that you need to have flickr photos that are public in order to be approved into the group. For some reason there are several people who have wanted to join but have no public photos which defeats the purpose of the pool which is to share images. So just make sure you have “made public” appropriate photos and sets, hopefully textile related, and you’ll be good to go! So far we have 63 members from around the world and almost 500 images!
Here is another view of the above fabric which shows definite stitch resist lines running horizontally. It’s a little easier to see given the larger field of fabric.
click the image for a larger view
The consensus seems to be that it is a very carefully done mokume pattern. Mokume, a stitch resist method is a parallel running stitch resist that produces a woodgrain pattern. Mokume sanbu nui shibori is a parallel pleated stitched resist. I wonder if the pleating first would help Lisa with getting the fabric to lay more smoothly…….
Thanks to Lisa, I’ll be stitching a sample based on her stitch diagram #2 and see how it goes…. and trying some pleating along with it just for kicks!
Shibori Girl 