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We had a one day intense workshop with Nikita Jain and Priyanka Patel , where they shared with us the magic of Shibori. We had done tie-dye earlier, and were fascinated by the simple technique of knotting and dyeing fabric to create happiness!
Shibori is the Japanese word–meaning to wring, squeeze, press–for a number of ways of embellishing textiles by shaping cloth and securing it before dyeing. It was magical because of the various labor intensive techniques that created elaborate patterns that were unexpected and mind blowing. The techniques involving crumpling, stitching, plaiting, plucking and twisting. Once the cloth was ‘shaped’ by these methods, we secured it in a number of ways, such as binding, clamping or knotting.
The children’s questions moved from, ‘ what will happen if I do this?’ to ‘let me try this!’
The element of chance to the display of patterns and colours of this method gave life to the shibori process and added its special magic to the fabric and us.
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| Playing with the fabric…. |
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| being placed into indigo dye… |
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| Every step of the procedure called for a pause…. |
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| The wait…. |
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| Each method gave unique results and revealed exciting moments. |
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| Look look look! |
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| An element of the unexpected was always present! |
