Shibori experiments

A lovely New Year treat at Studio 11, despite waking up with a horrible migraine. One of my focuses this year is to pursue Shibori further and I thought it would add some interest to use one of the pieces of fabric I dyed two years ago in the Colour Fun workshop that was my introduction to the pleasures of working with dyes and fabrics. So I took this piece, which was a tray dyed bit of cotton, rippled across diagonally then dyed with a variety of reds, rusts and the odd spot of purple and green

I folded it concertina style

loosely tacked the folds down at each edge, then stitched diagonals across the folded fabric, running the stitching in the same direction as the marks on the fabric

my plan to pull all the stitching up and overdye with another colour. But what colour I wondered? After discussion with Christine, who has a marvelous sense of colour, I decided on a mixture of petrol green with a touch of indigo, colours across the colour wheel from the ones already here, in other words, complimentary, rather than analogous.

I also did a small bit of pole wrapped fabric, not the usual pole wrapping which involves spiraling a single layer of fabric around a pole, wrapping thread round in another spiral, then compressing it all by sliding the fabric and thread to the bottom of the pole. This creates lovely rippling patterns, but I wanted to try for a mandala effect.

I placed the pole vertically at the centre of the fabric, drew the fabric up around the pole and taped that firmly while I wound thread in a spiral. I tied a piece of plastic over the end of the pole, intending to create a bright heart, with the pattern radiating out from the centre.

How did they turn out? I'll let you know when they come out of the washing machine.

I also did some work on the breakdown printing for which I dyed a family of fabrics earlier