Tien Chiu

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March 18, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Mokume shibori

I’m doing a five-week workshop on shibori, and have finally gotten caught up to the current lesson, which is on stitched shibori.  So far all I’ve done is mokume shibori, which is parallel lines of stitching.  Why so much time on one technique?  Because all woven shibori is variants on mokume shibori!  So doing a small number of exercises in hand-stitched mokume shibori will teach me the principles of woven shibori.   Then I can take those concepts back to the loom and work on bigger pieces in woven shibori, confident in my designs.

Here are some of my before-and-after photos:

Long stitches, spaced identically
Long stitches, spaced identically. The fabric is pulled up into parallel (and quite boring) pleats; furthermore, the compression is so good that very little dye gets into the fabric.
mokume shibori - long stitches, staggered
mokume shibori - long stitches, spaced in parallel rows 1" apart and staggered so the stitches lie precisely opposite each other. Notice the complex texturing and the diagonal lines!
mokume shibori - long stitches vs. short stitches
mokume shibori - long stitches (outer rectangle) vs. short stitches (inner rectangle).
A heart, in mokume shibori
mokume shibori heart - long stitches on outside, floats on outside heart, small stitches in inner heart.

I’ve learned a tremendous amount about how woven shibori works just from these few exercises, and will continue stitching samplers until I understand the principles of mokume shibori a little better.  Then it will be back to the loom!

Meanwhile, Kodachrome is completed except for the snaps (which need to be sewn down firmly) and the lining, which needs to be re-hemmed.  For some reason, the lining is too short near the center back, so I’ll need to redo the hem, dropping it by about 3/4″.  Fortunately I have enough length that I can do this!  After that, all that will be left is sewing in the label.

Sunday is the photo shoot, and it should be fun!  A friend is coming over to help me do my hair, and I have a makeup artist coming over to “do me up” for the shoot.  First she’s going to do “the natural look” (that’s for Handwoven) and then she’s going to do a much more theatrical look (that’s for HGA/Convergence, if it doesn’t get published in Handwoven).  I’m rather looking forward to the theatrical look – I have, as you know, a penchant for body paint, and I think it would be really cool to have my face painted up with rainbow colors.  Sort of like body paint, only slightly more localized.  🙂

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Filed Under: All blog posts, textiles, dyeing Tagged With: shibori, woven shibori

Previous post: Training and retraining
Next post: Success!

Comments

  1. deanna7trees says

    March 19, 2011 at 7:10 am

    wonderful results and thanks so much for the great explanations.

  2. Jacky says

    March 19, 2011 at 2:54 pm

    Your samples are beautiful Tien and I love all of the before and after pics. Great to see how you achieved the different effect.

    I intend to do some dyeing tomorrow, so will be stitching tonight!

    Jacky xox

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