Primitive Rope Making

Someone had cut down a shuro tree and taken it to the local sawmill to have it processed. The shredded type bark looked as if it would make a good lesson in beauty/utility. Sure enough, Ogata san knew how to make a strong rope and immediately set about showing the other students how to. We couldn't find her 'off' switch and she quickly used up everyone else's supply of shred. Her masterpiece is now hung in the kitchen on the art object wall.

Indigo Reduction

Indigo dying is tricky.
There are some tribes in Africa that seem to be doing it the no-nonsense way. They take the indigo leaves and pound the pigment directly into the cloth with a small club. This is the smart way to avoid the hassle of removing the oxygen from the dying liquid either chemically of through fermenting. If one of the oxygen molecules in the pigment chemical equation is not removed the indigo will not stick to the cloth.

A fermentation type vat gone wrong is the foulest thing that can happen to a natural dyer. Putrid gas. And things can go wrong very quickly. You start with the vat only one tenth full of high pH water from either seeping ash or with slaked lime. Each day you add a bucket or so. When the indigo compost starts to ferment you add a cup of sugar source to just bring the good bacteria over the edge and to bloom. Too early and it burns out without reaching a kind of critical mass and too late it goes bad. (The whole process is kind of sexy come to think of it.) One time I was stupid enough to add a cup of sugar dissolved in tap water that contained chlorine. I should only use water from the stream next to the house.
In an hour the sharp healthy ammonia smell turned to putrid rotten swamp gunk. It could be salvaged with a chemical reduction agent. The color was fine but the smell was foul.

The recent stink was simply caused by a build up of slaked lime and hydro-sulphate reduction agent building up at the bottom of the vat. The hot summer weather starting it stinking and the smell in whatever form it took just couldn't be eliminated.

Like Velma said, the smell in the dyed clothing can be gotten rid of in one hot water wash.

The indigo bubbles on the surface of the indigo tell you the condition of the vat. If they are purple and oily looking there is enough actual pigment in the water. If they are clear and light blue and slightly frothy you need to add pigment. If the liquid just under the surface is not yellow green that is telling you that there is too much oxygen in the vat and needs to be removed.

If you get to know the sound of a stick hitting the inside wall of the vat you can quickly judge the pH level. A low 'thung' means a low pH. A higher 'ting' means the pH is about 12 where it should be. It takes a few years to get really good at reading the signs in the bubbles and the smell. It starts to get like palm reading when you notice lines and milkiness etc and other finer nuances and their meanings as you understand the vat over years.

Indigo dyed good are often attributed with keeping insects and snakes away, stopping athletes foot, and generally being good for you. I wonder.... I've gotten bitten many times while working at the dye vat and a somewhat doubt the poisonous mamushi around my place could care less what I am wearing. If I really annoyed them I'm sure they woud bite no matter what.

I do think that the bacteria on newly dyed indigo clothes from a pure natural fermentation vat might be healthy but I doubt the indigo pigment has any health benifits.

The color itself is another story. As a natural dye it is gentle to look at and vibrates at a pure frequency. This is good for anyone. Pure and simple.

Stinking Indigo Vat at my Door

It was time to get rid of the old liquid and clean up the ceramic vat and the blue stained walls around it. For the past three years indigo pigment and slaked lime and hydro sulphate were added as necessary week after week. These eventually build up at the bottom of the vat. Eventually it starts to reek something fierce. It dyes as usual but the fun is gone with your gag reflex on hair-trigger mode.

But the strong ammonia smell of a fermentation indigo vat just smells like tough love perfection. However, it is impossible and impractical to keep a fermentation vat going throughout the year. Too much constant maintenance, way too expensive, and the vat is mostly used by students and friends and they tend to dump in anything for the thrill of watching it turn blue.. You have to be very gentle dying with a fermentation vat and it is impossible to keep an eye on who is dying what. A good friend once dyed a heavy duty hammock he picked up in Thailand in the best fermanatation indigo. Must have been a good $200 indigo dye job on a $5 hammock.

Now I make a fementation vat once a year using my own home grown indigo if there is some very good stuff needing a dye job.




The buildup sludge of exhausted pigment, slaked lime and hydro sulphate at the bottom of the vat. I dyed a full day to use up as much pigment as possible. I threw in some old sheets to absorb as much hydro sulphate as possible and neutralize the pH. These I dried in the sun and then put them out in regular burnable garbage. Then I siphoned off the dye liquid. How to get rid of this muck at the bottom is the problem. I dribbled in water for one night and let it go down the outside drain that goes into a river nearby. It would be like dumping in a bucket of bleach if I did it directly so I prolonged the process. It didn't really work and the muck was still in the bucket in the morning. I spread it out to dry and them I'll put it out in the burnable garbage. The exhausted hydro sulphate being the bad guy here.

A fermentation vat is easier on my conscience to throw away. The shock is the high alkaline and that can be soved with the dribble technique.



This little creek crab seemed to like the blue water. It was horrifying and I got him out of there and washed up and placed upstream in a flash.





Add enough slaked lime to get a pH reading of 12. Do this before you add indigo pigment so that the pH test paper doesn't dye blue. The orange paper is a more specific pH test paper used for a more accurate reading. German made electric pH readers are not so expensive and very easy to use for people not used to keeping an indigo vat.





Next add the indigo pigment itself. I use Konya brand I purchase from Seiwa. It is expensive but very very high quality.



A fresh indigo vat ready to use on a misty autumn afternoon.

Damselfly Stencil

"I want to cut a stencil to make something that is unexpected."
Eri was having a moment of creative fatigue. The straight-faced disgust of ersatz Japanese stencil life. Cherry blossoms and rabbits in the autumn grass stuff. Walking away would have prolonged her misery. On the kitchen table was an entomological book on insects filled with gruesome line illustrations of larvae and pupae and up close hair on the abdomens of water skeeters kind of thing. What about insects? Gross.
She picked it up and within minutes was at work cutting out this damselfly stencil. A little like botanical art.
It worked out and yesterday it was used for the first time. Without wetting the cloth properly it floated on the surface of the indigo giving it a screwed up dye job that somehow works perfect.

Eri will cut out a few more and it looks like she is shooting for a series of Japanese work aprons.

The Mystery Dog

15 junior high school students dropped by the house to learn about silk and thread making on Tuesday. Walking down to the village entrance to meet them, it was a delight to see Snoopy walking up with them as a good guide would. With a tail wag and a nod, pointing out the shrine, the pride of the village and other village spots of interest.

Does your class keep a dog and take turns looking after it on weekends?
Eh???
Well, whose dog is it? One of you brought it from home?
No. It just showed up a way back and is following us.
I've never seen it around here before. It has a tag, maybe it's name is written on it.
Snoopy.
Is it a male or a female?
(They shyly check.) Female

When they arrive at the house Snoopy walks in the door and drinks from the bucket of water inside the door. The students gasp. Teacher! Is it OK?
No problem. I just use that bucket to wash my shoes. The water is clean. (It is their first time in a house of a non-Japanese and I suppose they swallowed this shoe wash bucket oddity with out much thought.)
She is jumping up into the chair!! Is it OK?
No problem. I'll call the dog catcher later and they will come and pick her up. (Looks of disbelief and horror.)
Does anyone want her? I can't keep a pet here.
No. My grandma hates dogs. I have a Yorkshire Terrier already.
OK. Off to the pound.
Ehhh!!

The cocoon reeling demonstration goes on and Snoopy is getting sad desperate looks and gentle pets. I get a few puppy dog looks from the kids... Can he be that cruel? Sending a dog off to the pound so casually.
Suddenly one kid spots a photo of Snoopy on the table...Teacher!!!!!!!!!!!!! Snoopy lives here!!!!!!!!!!! Their faces all light up and there is a huge collective sigh of relief. Being a little choked up at Snoopy's faux-death-row-last-minute-reprieve the demonstration took a few second break while Snoopy got smothered in almost visible waves of good will. She soaked it up, her coat seemed shinier and the class continued.

Haven't Woven in Sixty Years...

Ogata san is 92 years old. She lives nearby and has come regularly to my Tuesday class for years now. She does indigo dying but it is getting colder and I am worried about her outside getting a chill with her hands in the indigo in the winter. She makes lunch for us all from whatever is in her garden. She still tills the ground by shovel herself and grows just about everything. It is not like, 'Granny is still pretty sharp.' No, this Granny is actually sharp. She is my bud and we drive around like old friends flirting with each other. I can't help but make cracks about her age. I was telling her how I will fix up my clay storehouse next to my house. "It is in good condition for 150 years old. Well, actually Ogata san it could be your older sister... " This kind of thing. She was already an adult at the end of WWII. Her grandparents lived in Edo period . They wore kimono and lived in a culture we can't really imagine. Now here she is coming to my place and studying traditional Japanese textiles from a Canadian. Nuts.

Something sad about it actually. I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it is the depressing reality of my role in Empire.

We all love her. I've had this monstrous Finnish loom that I have no real idea how to use taking up half a room for several years. Today it started to function again. Ogata san wove kimono for many years when she was young for herself and her family. She hasn't woven in sixty years and a few of us were almost teary watching her give it another shot all these years later. I set it for a tweed and she quickly took it on a joyride and showed us what it could do. She later confessed that she actually couldn't remember the pedal sequence.

Hole in Blog / Hole in House

It was a slow build up and then the snowball effect. This old farmhouse is just too big to start renovating. Endless. The house was more of a huge barn than a house and the holes in the walls where the clay walls had fallen out and bird's nests in the rafters and un-entered-for-years-rooms are somehow charming. At first there was an ambitious plan of making six massive cabinets that would at least get a fraction of the boxes and stuff off the floor. They filled up as they were completed and it didn't really seem to be making a dent in the volume of silk farming equipment weaving looms and cocoon reelers and a collection of old wood waiting to be made into something, a far out of control collection of everything. Space is a luxury in Japan and it quickly fills up as free storage for friends!

There are massive smoke stained rafters and beams and pillars. The third floor will have to wait but the second floor has been ripped out and is now being put back together. One convenient aspect to old Japanese farmhouses is that when you rip out the floor and replace it you also are ripping out the ceiling below. So here are a few snaps of what is going on. Thanks to my students for putting up with the hammering and sawing as you go about your work below. The space on the second floor will be a weaving workshop with room for more looms.

Luckily there is a small cedar mill a few kilometers away that reminds me of the cedar mill in Canada that kept me going for nine years. The house is getting an upgraded and remodeled gentrified look. All the poetry is being wiped out with every rotten piece of flooring replaced and each hole patched. Mentioning this to the Buddhist Priest/carpenter who is helping , he flatly replied that it was "Bad unhygienic poetry and it would be far better off with cleanliness." But maybe the dirt should have been scrubbed away, the holes in the wall left as they were and then a foot of sawdust thrown on the floor and trampled down and the weaving class expanded onto that instead of the theme restaurant direction these renovations are headed into. On the other hand, 'The smell of decay can be covered with the sound of construction.'

Faux Smoked Salmon Skin/ Obi progress

Takeshima wove some paper thread weft on a linen warp. It was her first time to weave anything.The paper thread came from some odds and ends picked up on Yahoo auction. Once woven she cut out a Buddhist cloud pattern (her first stencil) and we made the rice and bran paste and then dyed it with indigo. Then we took off the paste, shifted the pattern slightly and re-pasted it. I dipped it in the persimmon tannin every morning for three weeks and it came out looking like smoked salmon skin. She is a very imaginative bag maker and we are all looking forward to see the salmon bag. Her first weaving and first stencil dye project in one.

Kamei san has been working on her obi step by step by step using shibori and katazome techniques together. Again it was pasted once and dyed with indigo six times. The paste removed and the obi dried and ironed. Next a second pasting of the same stencil slightly shifted and dyed twice to get a light blue shadow. The obi will be folded in half and the back pattern is shibori. Next step will be to dye the shibori half with an orange dye, perhaps madder with gardenia pods. The blue will be greenish.


The back side of the obi stitched and ready to dye.


Pasted for the second time with the stencil slightlyshifted. Use fine cedar sawdust on the still sticky rice paste to make it slightly stronger. We looked at several samples of Japanese karakusa (arabesque) and combined several ideas and from that she cut out this particular stencil.

Looking refined and timeless with a few more steps left!

Persimmons and Stencil Dying

Persimmon tannin is used to make the traditional Japanese katagami stencil paper and I use persimmon tannin later in the process to dye with.

Certain varieties of unripe persimmons are used for their high tannin content to make a traditional water repellent in Japan and Korea. (Perhaps, also in other areas in the world I am not aware of.) You run across articles on persimmon tannin processing in magazines and musty old journals on Japanese crafts. Inevitably the used-for-a-single-week-a-year-hand-cranked-fruit/persimmon squasher is pictured in the corner of a smelly barn along with rustic bamboo baskets overflowing with green persimmons . A farmer and his wife with cool dental work and tenugui wrapped on their heads standing in front of wood casks of fermenting liquid proudly but shyly. The process is described but the real secrets of the trade, like how long the fruit is allowed to ferment and how the bad bacteria is killed and how it is filtered etc. are always left conspicuously out. I've never been able to make the high-quality stuff but make an unrefined (some say better, but I don't agree) instant version.

Our local band of monkeys climb up and steal the fruit this time of year and it is easy to collect the fallen squashies and grate them with a stainless cheese grater. Then squeeze out the pulp and use the juice to dye thread and cloth. It takes several weeks for the earth tones to come out.

The persimmon tannin liquid that is more stable than my home made version. There has been a boom in kakishibi use the past few years and the price has dramatically come down. The slightly more expensive type from Seiwa in Takodanobaba is very good. They came out with a much less smelly version a few years ago. Why they still sell the rancid 'Eau de Poo' variety at the same price it is difficult understand. It used to be like buying a bottle of distilled diarrhea. Honestly.

Every house in the Japanese countryside has at least a few persimmon trees. At least one would be a sweet variety where the fruit can be eaten once it turns red in October. The others will be a very astringent variety that will be peeled and strung up from the outside rafters in the sun to make a sweet dried fruit. The leaves in early spring are used to wrap sushi in and contain some natural preservative that lightly flavors the fish. The trees themselves are a gorgeous part of the autumn scenery with the red fruit hanging form branches the farmers/monkeys couldn't reach. A few hang in there into winter for birds to savor.


The house with a few hanging/drying persimmons.

Persimmon dye needs ultra-violet rays to change into the golden brown color. You dilute the liquid one third to one fifth depending on whether you are dying thread or depending on the coarseness of the cloth and it's eventual function. Wet the cloth directly in the diluted solution and then place it directly on the ground or I sometimes put it on my metal kitchen roof. Snoopy loves to walk on it as it dries so precious stuff gets the roof treatment where Snoopy can't access it. You want as much heat and direct sun as possible. The tannin absorbs the suns rays and turns a crispy golden brown. One piece usually goes through this process at least 15 times. Thread of course is hung up.


It is impossible to get an even dye on thread. Just the areas the sun hits in the first few hours will turn dark.

I look forward to the dying season all winter and can squeeze in perhaps five weeks from mid-May until the monsoon starts and I start again in August when it lifts. The days are getting shorter now and there are only a few weeks left to dye at most. Last week that the color changes slower than it has been. The shadows are longer and it's sad not to be up at the crack of dawn with the daily routine of wetting the cloth and thread and arranging it in the sun to soak up the heat.

This same persimmon tannin has been used for hundreds of years to make a layered paper called, Katagami used for cutting stencils. Thin washi (Japanese hand made paper)is covered with the tannin and several layers are added. (I have seen it made with newspaper and tannin as well.) It comes in several thicknesses. It is tough and when wet resembles leather to some degree. It can be punch cut or cutter knife cut. Some stencils require a fine silk mesh to be lacquered in place to enforce the stencil before it can be used. It has a distinct wood creosote smell. (Creosote is what they used to dunk railway ties in to preserve them. When making charcoal the sugar and liquid content of the wood goes out the chimney. The liquid can be dripped/distilled out of the flue easily.)



I am currently cutting out this stencil of lotus and leaves. I will use the stencil to make a kimono which has no shoulder seams. The pattern must face both up and down and look natural. Hmmm. The design on the edges must line up to make a repeating pattern. It is too Japanese folk-crafty for my liking but already I've invested a dozen evening beer and as many hours so I'll finish it up. I'll carve three stencils in total to resist in several startges. The flowers white. The pond dark and the leaves light blue. Still a lot of work ahead of me here before the pasting and dying even start. You can see the special hand made knife I use to cut the stencil out with.

There are a few large pots of lotus outside the front door and they are used as a motifs occasionally. They bloom only a few hours and then fade quickly. They are heavily laden with Buddhist meaning. Out of the mud comes purity... life is transient...kind of thing. Buddha usually sits on some kind of lotus platform and lotus are often swirling around somewhere in his halo or on his garments.



Here is a stencil I carved many years ago of willow branches behind a blind. It has been used so many times it has fallen to pieces. It is still possible still squeeze out a few more works once in a while. The stencil may be in shreds but it seems happy to be made use out of. Like dropping by for coffee with an old friend who isn't quite all there but seems to enjoy the company and reminiscing about younger days.

This wallet was made from some linen patterned from the falling apart stencil. Indigo and persimmon tannin dyes.

Making Tools

I encourage all my students to weave on simple back strap looms for some time before investing in a larger expensive loom. First, so that they really know if they like weaving or it is just a romantic passing phase. Secondly, I think the experience with a more primitive loom gives them more insight into weaving and the aesthetics I particularly want to pass on to them. Some make their own reeds from bamboo grown locally. (see old post, TUESDAY, 30 MARCH, 2010) Here Minako has just finished her back cushion for her simple backstrap loom. She wove the rag weave herself using vegetable dyed silk scraps from old kimono lining and dyed the indigo inner cushion. The smoked bamboo support comes from the bamboo rafters of a thatch roofed farmhouse that was sadly taken down in a near by village last year. These simple parts of her weaving tools will last a lifetime. Like drinking from a favorite cup over many years it is comforting to use familiar and comforting tools to weave.

Natural Dyes

Here is a good example of how a single dye bath can produce dye two different shades. The pigment was from onion skins. Approximately four times the weight of the dry silk to be dyed. The skins were brought to a boil and the first liquid was taken, carefully filtering any jellyish gunk from the boiled bath. The skins were brought to a boil again and the second dye bath taken. They were combined. The lighter skein was dyed for five minutes and then iron mordanted in a light solution for a few minutes. The lighter skein was also dyed in skein form and not opened so that the thread intentionally dyes unevenly. The second skein was left in the dye bath for 30 minutes and 10 minutes in a slightly stronger iron mordant solution. The color depth and difference coming from the amount of pigment absorbed, the amount of mordant used and the amount of time the thread was mordanted and left in the dye bath. Both colors are beautiful. I prefer to dye many different colors, build up a stock and then combine them later. On occasion I will aim for a specific color if the dyestuff is not available throughout the year and I want to weave a bigger item like a kimono.

I spun the darker silk roughly on a foot peddled spinning wheel. The camel colored thread was spun by Minako san on a motor driven silk spinner.

Katazome

In a few posts over the next month I will try to give some insights into Japanese Katazome from my experiences. No Specific order...

Katazome is the word used for a paste resist type of dying in Japan. The subject quickly gets broad and deep at the same time. I'll keep it somewhat simple and focused to indigo dyed material here.

It was a skill I picked up unintentionally over several years. I often visited a katazome/indigo craftsman in a nearby town to dye with his indigo in the winter months when I didn't have a vat going at my house myself. I was first introduced to Noguchi san 17 years ago when I took my elderly friend there so she could dye some silk thread blue for a kimono she wanted to weave for her husband. I had been to several natural fermentation indigo studios before (and studied) but this was the first one that seemed 'pure' in the sense that it was a 7th generation craftsman making a single product, a double-sided paste resist summer cotton kimono.

The place was/is ramshackle and even had a wooden bathtub heated by a fire. Unfortunately it was replaced by a plastic model a few years back. (Let me digress...an aged wooden cedar bathtub feels like heaven on yer bare bottom after a hard day at the indigo vat.) In other words, the place was real. No pretensions, no gift shop selling indigo dyed tissue box covers and dorky hiking hats with a tag explaining that indigo has been 'used since ancient times to ward off mosquitoes'. Here was just a straightforward craftsman and his wife and family struggling to make ends meet.

At that time I was dying thread and shape resist material and not interested in Katazome.


I was doing my best to get a handle on those skills and was cognitively dissonant to the process going on next to me that Noguchi san had been going through since he was a child helping his father and grandfather. I watched him from a distance in his studio and asked polite questions about the seemingly impossible to understand process. There were ancient hand crank machines and brick ovens, wooden tubs of ash and powders and soot and soybeans and an array of blue stained hooked and pointed tools. I felt I had seen these things in some torture dungeon in a castle/museum somewhere in Europe. I knew these tools were all in-use to make a simple innocent looking roll of flower printed indigo cloth. The whole place is still somewhat spooky and time slipped like a surreal indigo blue splashed slaughterhouse. A casual glance around the place with the almost overwhelming smell of ammonia from the fermenting indigo vats might make you into some kind of denim phobic version of a vegetarian.

I honestly thought it would take a life time of someone far more skilled than myself to penetrate into. So I didn't even try at first.

Taking in his complex work was like learning a language. Watching the big one's mouths move and unconsciously forming the sounds with your own mouth. I must have looked pretty fetal speaking broken Japanese and gawking all around me at the incomprehensible chaotic studio.

I helped him prepare a 6 meter board with heavy rice paste one day. I couldn't fathom why. I watched him make the paste from some really foul-looking goops in ceramic containers pulled out of a burrow in the ground. I couldn't fathom all the fuss and effort until years later when I started to make my own paste that always seemed to be lacking something. Body or elasticity or some other quality that made it impossible to get a clear line when dying.



He would grind some red powder from taken from an amber apothocaric type chipped glass cylinder kept on a rafter beam, with a mortar and pestle. Later I figured out some of the chaos in the system and that there was a system in the chaos. The goop was kept under the ground to keep it cool and not quite fermenting, the pigment was kept on a rafter to keep it dry and was used to make the paste visible on a neutral background fabric. The heavier paste was to hold the linen in perfect place so the pattern could be seamlessly stenciled in place. The hundreds of steps are not carried out in an order that makes sense to the casual observer. Dropping in once a month for a few hours was like randomly reading pages in a Dostoevsky novel. It couldn't possibly make sense until read from the start to the finish.

After several years of visiting Noguchi san I realized I had almost unintentionally figured out what he was doing. When I started the questions in earnest I ran into the famous Japanese proverb and it painfully stubbed my too big Caucasian nose. 'A master doesn't teach you must steal his technique.'

Stealing technique. Young me and ageless Noguchi san.


Technique stolen and starting on my own.




He was suddenly very mute and I even got an single arched eyebrow and grumpf when I queried a bit to obviously into his secret recipe for keeping his indigo healthy in the winter. I've caught my own eyebrow arch and a snark in my own voice when I am asked these same questions now. Not that I am being cheap with the tricks of the trade. No... it's that the tricks have taken years and years to pick up and it is like asking a fisherman about the cloud formations and the chance of rain. These things are not put into words and to try invites an instant migraine.


Noguchi san.

Cherry Tree Bark Dye

We climbed up the mountain behind the house and cut a few branches of wild mountain yamazakura. We thinly sliced off the bark off the heavier branches and finely chopped up the smaller twigs. The leaves are sweet so at this time of year insects have munched most of them off. What was leftover went into the dye pot as well. Boiled for an hour the dye liquid was a loquat colored pink. We dyed hand spun silk a creamy yellow without the slightest hint of the pink we were hoping for. (And I had promised...) Maybe the specific tree, maybe the time of year but no pinkish hue.
With a light iron mordant we got a delicate green grey which we found to be called, torinokoiro 'bird egg/baby color' in Japanese.

Besides the general practical information about mordant salts and which plant gives which color I had to start to explain the limitations of trying to get the same color twice. You can never make the exact silk thread twice. The amount of gum removed from the silk will be different. The amount of twist will be different and the plants pigment content are always changing with the season and the weather.

They are both learning to spin silk floss right now. I'll try to show them the colors we can get form the vines, branches, roots and leaves in the close vicinity of my house each week. I tell the students the best way to learn about natural dying is to just keep dying and dying for months. The amount of thread builds up and then the fun part of combining colors starts.

It was Minako and Takeshima's first go at natural dyes. Looks like they are hooked after their first try.

Arrow Kasuri... weaving up well

This is some thing I am working on. I tied and resisted some of the warp threads first. Then indigo dyed them.


Threading the reed and warping was trouble free but quite slow.



The arrow kasuri was a common pattern in the Edo period. Lining them up harmoniously is the tricky part. The thread is linen. It will be folded in half and become a men's obi. Yuko and I will l weave 4 meters each. She is so skilled. Just started weaving and already she is keeping up with me on such a difficult project.

Kamei san's Nagoya Obi

Kamei san cut her own stencil on persimmon tannin paper and applied a silk net to keep the stencil strong. She is applying the rice and bran paste with some red pigment to the cloth. The red pigment in the paste is eventually washed away. It functions so that the paste is visible against the cloth color to ensure the paste is spread evenly. The next step will be to dye it indigo tomorrow, reapply paste on both sides and then if weather permits start persimmon tannin dying over the next few weeks while the ultra-violet rays are still strong enough.

The powder is from red cedar and helps the paste last a few more dips in the indigo.

She is adding the resist paste by hand/finger to the bars that support her stencil pattern.

Summer Cotton/Linen Kimono

It is a bit of a challenge to make sure each of the students makes a yukata different from the other students. I wanted Kamei san to make something feminine and elegant. It took her a tremendous amount of effort to tie this 13 meters of linen. The dying would usually take a full day to dip and then oxidize the entire roll over ten times. This time we simply poured the indigo onto the material, let it oxidize and repeated this several times to get an icy and cloudy effect. It looks very Kyoto I felt. The dying only took half an hour. It must of felt slightly anti-climatic for her after all that work stitching and binding. Shibori aficionados will love the effort gone into this subtle work.

This is a sample of what her yukata would have looked like had she dipped it ten times. Traditional pattern. Very bold.