Doubled Fold Wood Grain/Patterned Shibori Shawl Instructions

Here are some step by step instructions to make a gorgeous indigo shibori shawl. I have sent off boxes with the material and needles and thread etc. to the Autumn Workshop members for them to work on before they come stay with me in Japan. Shibori is so time consuming I want them to make at least one piece that they suffer (slightly) through to understand the value of a one-off-shibori piece.

The shawl is wide and in order to half the stitching time the material is folded in half and stitched through two layers. This technique is often used in Rajastani tie dye pieces. I've seen only a few pieces like this done in Japan traditionally. The Japanese would go through the extra stitching to get a specific pattern. I like the mirror image actually.

Here are a few pictures of Kawamotos san's shawl from a few months back.

Ogata san is working on a simplified version. There is not the secondary middle stripe to make a separate positive/ negative section. I leave it up to you to figure out how complex you would like to stitch.

First fold the shawl in half width wise. Iron that flat. Stitch the two open sides together so it becomes a tube. 

The weave is almost gauze like. A double knot can easily be pulled through the weave so a ribbon is basted on the fold side of the  cloth so that the knots will not be pulled through the gauze. 

Horizontal stripes are drawn on using a blue disappearing ink (Aobana) at three centimeter intervals.

When all the horizontal stripes are drawn then the wave pattern is drawn in vertically. Avoid any horizontal stretches.

You can see the brown ribbon stitched onto the right side (actual center of the opened shawl) and the two sides stitched together on the left hand side.

First the drawn lines are stitched up.  When you come to a line you jump over and continue stitching from the next line over. Double knot your ends on both sides of the cloth so they can't be pulled through.

I used a black thread to make it easier to see but white thread is fine. Sew two rows between each line so that you have a row every centimeter. Drawing lines every centimeter is no fun and stitching without lines gives an overall more interesting casual appearance.

And it should look like this on the back.

Snoopy is doing well.

Good old Snoopy is on her feet again. Shaky and a little confused, she is a survivor.

I found the series of 'start buttons' that were eluding me and they've been pushed and preparation projects for my autumn indigo guests are in full swing. The front garden is half finished, two storage sheds constructed, the second floor's flooring ripped out again and having the squeeks removed one by one. It is a few degrees below bearable and with Snoopy sleeping in the kitchen with a peaceful smile on her face..... life is good. There will be some holes in the blogging with all the carpentry and preparation going on.

Thank you for all the kind get well wishes for my Snooperoo.

Bryan

Good Old Friends

Ogata san has a good sized field in front of her house where she tills the land and grows just about everything. Every Tuesday she brings fresh flowers and vegetables and cooks for us. It was her 94th birthday last week and we had a birthday party for her at the house today. Last year we took her out for lunch but it was not enough. Today we had a gorgeous sushi and tempura party for her. Being the Leo she is, she just soaked up our worship and smiled like the queen she is! My camera is on the blink so the pictures are blurry.

Old Snoopy is not faring well these days. Her back legs are shot but she managed to make it down to the village festival on the weekend where everyone there did what we did for Ogata san today....Only Snoopy doesn't know when to quit when it comes to good food. She gorged herself on grilled boar meat until she couldn't walk back up the hill. I went down and found her under the table stuffed and looking like she would burst. I carried her home and later it seems she suffered a small stroke or something misfired and now she has no sense of balance. She tips over after one step. Poor pooch. After a long day at her favorite vet today she looks a bit better. 

She is over 22 years old and has been living with me for over 19 years.  The front door has been open all these years and she comes and goes as she pleases. I have a hundred Snoopy adventure stories and everyone knows her. Now stone deaf, half blind and invalid everyone still loves her. Just a wonderful character. Does her own thing, doesn't listen to a thing anyone says. A good friend who is always there making the room feel comfortable. 

Geiger found a new home and he will move out next week. A lot of dog drama happening around the house. Snoopy likes to be near him when she sleeps. A little senior dog romance happening as well.

Persimmon Dying Silk Thread Skeins Hint / （柿渋糸染）

The dozen skeins of golden brown silk thread hung out in the sun every morning in front of the house attracts a lot of attention. They seem to be absorbing the sun and toasting slowly as the weeks go by. The color, shine and crispness is like cinnamon toast and a drawer of warm socks from the dryer.

It is impossible to get an even dye on skeins of thread with persimmon dye. I dyed the 140 cm skeins 6 times and then re-skeined them to 110 centimeters effectively scattering the light spots that were resisted from the sun's rays by the protective threads.
You can see the light parts here.

The skein on the right is the original size. I re-skeined the other two and re-distributed the light spots to get a proper random dyed variegation to be dyed over six more times with the persimmon tannin. A lot of work. A lot of work.

Homemade Kaishibu/Persimmon Tannin

Every house in this and the surrounding mountain villages has at least a few persimmon trees planted for the autumn fruit.  They are basically divided into two categories; sweet or astringent. The sweet kaki fruit can be eaten when it ripens off the tree.

There were very few sources of sugar in Japan until the country was flooded with Snickers and friends after WWII. These persimmons were a real treat in days long ago. The astringent ones must be semi dried in the sun before they are edible. The tartness evaporates and you can find countless varieties of these naturally sugar-coated candied persimmon jelly fruits made with this basic sun dried technique all over Japan.

It is these astringent types that are the source of a tannin when they are still green in August. The simplest way to use the fruit to dye is to simply grate it and squeeze the pulp and paint the sticky tannin heavy juice onto whatever it is you want to dye. It should absorb deeply into the material or it will simply flake off after a few hours in the sun. After coating the juice in/on, simply place it in the direct sunlight and wait until it turns golden brown. You can hang it or place it flat on the ground. The point is to get as many direct rays and heat as quickly as possible. (This works on paper as well.)

Japanese used the persimmon dye as a simple waterproofing for umbrellas, tools etc. and as a coating to make katazome stencil paper. In the past few years, the price of the bottled tannin has gone down and it seems everyone is dying something with it. Besides being a little messy to work with, taking time and needing good weather, it is relatively easy to use and the results are usually good. There are no 'expert' persimmon juice dyers like there are with indigo and other natural dyes. There has been no 'bible' or extensive research of it's history and usages been published as far as I know.

Takeshima san and I took Geiger for a walk and stumbled upon some persimmons fallen from a tree and we quickly gathered them and took them back to the house and I showed her how to process them. She was a little leery of how simple the process was as there is a rumor out there that it is tricky to use.

  She painted the squeezed juice on a few meters of her antique market find  with a regular kid's paintbrush. We will see how deep the brown color becomes in the next few weeks as they soak up ultra-violet sun rays.  The persimmon juice/ kakishibu tannin（柿渋）purchased has been processed and goes on much lighter than this and would take several repeated coatings. This 'grate, squeeze and use right away' technique is the caveman way. But it works!

Summer Indigo and Persimmon Dyeing and Atomic Dog Forgiveness

 A single lotus blooms for two days and is followed by another. Ogata san came by for some extra indigo dying with a few of her great grandchildren yesterday. They have the same life force as her.

Kamei san finished this huge patterned mokume shawl. A  lot of work, a lot of patience. Beautiful piece. Kelp under the waves motif.

This persimmon piece used an old stencil I cut with more seaweed designs. Seven separate persimmon coatings and 14 days in the sun. These  stencils can be used over and over again. I let students use them and it gives me extra pleasure to see their work with them.

The bill collector came from Tokyo Denryoku, the operator of the nuclear power plants that melted down.  Love these guys. 7000 million yen spent a year on advertising in every magazine, newspaper, and TV station, radio station and Internet site in the country.  Great way to guarantee that there is never a single word ever spoken or written about the dangers of nuclear power. They just pull the advertising income from the  media company. Like Toshiba and every other manufacturer of nuclear reactor parts.

 I suppose Geiger's previous owners who were forced to evacuate suddenly without any idea why (Nuclear power is safe, no other information was available, god forbid a school textbook might mention it either.) leaving their dog behind to fend for himself. Here the bill collector has come and I asked if I could take his picture with my new dog. I didn't mention that Geiger is a refugee from Fukushima but my students seemed a little uncomfortable with me having a little fun with the camera, the nuked dog and the electricity bill collector. Distrust and then forgiveness....Geiger you are a better dog than I am human.

Indigo Shibori Kimono/Cleaning Old Textiles

The new rhythm of the Tuesday class is for a student to find some old cloth at a weekend antique market and bring it to class and ask me what to do with it. Their eyes are getting so much better. Takeshima san hit a market last weekend. In understated Japanese style, a cloth bag appeared and the treasures came out one by one.  We found ourselves all casually sitting in the floor in the entrance of the house, lotus blooming outside. Ogata san already at work at the indigo. First she showed us a kimono she had dyed a few weeks back and sewn recently. The material was originally a roll of somewhat ugly colored light purple sturdy gauze-like Aizu Momen. Perhaps 30 years old? A weave from the now unfortunately infamous area in Fukushima.

We looked at it months ago and were not that confident in what to do with it. It was a risk to use a shibori technique that would take hundreds of hours as I couldn't be certain how the cloth would dye. There is no way to know how some materials will take the indigo. The purple might cause some trouble as well. Takeshima san herself is bold and cute and straightforward. The pattern had to match her own whimsical tough demur and like a chord progression riff with a catchy hook she pulled it off with grace.

She took a few dollar roll (2000 yen?) of old cotton and managed to just get it right in deciding on an appropriate way to dye it. I thought katazome pattern would be a lot of work and the potential results a little dicey on that particular weave. It all came together perfectly.

Then a few more mouth watering treasures appeared. Diamonds in the rough. They were dark and discolored rolls of silk and linen. The first step was to bring a huge pot of water to a boil. Add some slaked line to up the pH to melt any sizing glue, add some dish soap to remove any oil and add some regular laundry soap to clump together all the muck taken off the material so it doesn't adhere back on to the cloth. Boil it for a few hours, then put the cloth through a cycle in the washing machine. Then boil it again to make sure the cloth is really clean.

She spent too much money in a fever at the market and I was more than happy to buy half of two of her purchases. Look at them! What will the world be like when we can't get this stuff anymore? No one makes it any more. You know that feeling of desperation and elation combined? So much poetry and information in these pieces. Woven into every shuttle pass with every hand made thread made from what was immediately available in their lives. From a  time when everything wasn't Made in Fucking China.

The ultimate goal is to be weaving these textiles ourselves. Weaving with limited resources, like a box of cocoons and some old wooden reelers and looms. I think they will all move more in this direction but the fascination now is getting and starting to read these old textiles and time travel back technologically, emotionally and economically (and I hope they get the idea of what politically and sociologically) was happening to a time when everything wasn't lit up so brightly. A time with a few quiet shadows around.

The striped material is almost unrecognizable from the dirty, smelly brown material that looked as if it had been nailed to a barn door for thirty years. Now that it is fresh and vibrant as only linen can be, I will leave it as it is. I'll saddle stitch up the edges and make a light linen shoulder blanket for the campfire on spring and autumn evenings. I'll stencil dye the plain linen weave and figure out a way to use it with respect. (Perhaps it will be there in a future exhibition in Florence Italy. :))