Barbara Geyer is an old friend of mine. We've spent mornings in the indigo field working our devils out, many afternoons at the indigo vat together working our lives out, and many days working together as a team to give people a glimpse of Japanese textiles. She had an immediate and strong reaction to the traditional textiles when she first visited Japan ten years ago. She has an intuitive feeling for things Japanese and a gut sense of what is really good. I was lucky to have been able to work with her again in Europe. And many people were lucky to get a deeper look at Japan because of her deep enthusiasm for things Japanese that powers one of her many engines!

This kind of shibori was used traditionally for diapers. Old cotton kimono would be taken apart , folded and dyed in indigo. This is the shape it was folded into and held with stitches before dying.

Kusagi Dying

Kusagi means "stink tree" in Japanese. It grows in my area off the sides of cliffs in swampy rocky dangerous places. Nondescript. The tree grows quickly for three to five years and then rots and dies. Hmmmm. It has a hydrangea like white flower in August and I take note of where the trees are as I drive by. In October the flowers have gone to a small blue black berries cuddled in red leaf frames. They last about a week before turning black. During this short window I gather them and use them as a dye. Like most berry dyes the color is not particularly fast. However it is particularly beautiful. You can dye light blues and over dye with pale yellow to get willow green. Gorgeous and rare colors in the vegetable dye world. The red frames dye a coppery color.

Late September....the landscape is bedraggled and vainly struggling for warmth and sunshine. Last chance to gather leaves and vines for dying. Kudzu is draped on the mountainsides now. Insect weary. Today we gathered some vines and used them to dye silk thread and silk scarves. There is a somewhat complicated technique of boiling the vines and leaves to remove the yellow pigment. On the second dye bath you raise the pH with carbonic acid. ( I can't figure out why they call it an acid when it raises pH and not lowers it though.) This releases the natural green pigments. Although nature looks green there are no real green pigments out there. Just chloryphil which doesn't dye green. Greens are usually made with a yellow over dyed with indigo.

Once the green pigments are removed in a pH9 dye bath, the dye bath's pH is reduced to pH6 with citric acid. (Some vinegar or a few lemons do the trick.) Then the silk is dyed as usual. Today we mordanted with cream of tarter and copper sulphate and iron to get a nuanced spectrum of greens and mosses and cream.

Drying freshly picked indigo from the field. The color is exceptionally good for a September harvest. I will slowly compost this batch in the winter to reduce to a high percentage of pigment. The indigo has a unique smell. Smells like a lot of work and a potential beautiful piece of dyed indigo cloth and blue silk thread.

Weaving is the simple part. There are too many steps to count in the process of setting up a loom to weave. The creative process is just as long and complicated. I don't want to dictate to the students too much it is best for them to think for themselves. They should look through samples and photos to get a feel for stripes and checks. Kumi is going to weave an obi for a summer kimono. We chose some plain linen thread and a deep indigo blue dyed silk and a light green silk( gardenia and indigo) accent thread. She spent time planning the balance of her thread count and started warping. It took her several hours warp five meters.

It takes so long from the start of a project to the end that it is easy to forget the order of the steps.

Rika spent her weekend stitching and binding 14 meters of linen/cotton in preparation for indigo dying today. I try to give you and idea of the binding methods in the photos. It turned out beautiful. Although the technique was close to the one Ayaka used last week for her Yukata it turned out differently.