Itajime results

My shibori students at Fleisher were wowed by the results of their itajime/clamp resist shibori dye experiments. Clamp dyeing definitely gives dramatic and graphic results compared to the more organic tie dyeing and pole wrapping we've done so far. We also added in the fun of overdyeing some commercially printed fabrics from the scrap pile.

 The center one above reminded us of skyscraper windows at night- it had been extensively pleated and clamped with binder clips.

 The long piece at right  above was clamped with wooden blocks, one of the largest shape sets we had, and gave a very bold butterfly effect

 I really loved the snowflake results above left- showing that the wood cutout aisle at AC Moore can yield some interesting resists.

 The red and blue pieces above both used a variety of plexiglass shapes and interesting folds for great variety and repetition.

 This blue piece was really the most incredible! I'm wondering if anyone can guess what was used as a resist....

 On Monday night we also revealed our sun-fade shibori. On the second night we had taken pieces of very dark solid-dyed fabric pieces out to the parking lot and bound them with tape resists, cardboard shape resist, and thread to various poles in very sunny spots. The hope was that if we left them long enough, the sun would fade the exposed areas. We probably should have left them one more week, but there was still some subtle fading occurring on the pieces. Enough to prove the experiment worked!

There's only 2 more weeks left. I'm hoping my students will put together some interesting final projects with the fabrics they've created. I really love dyeing fabric. It's an indulgence to get to teach this class and do some more myself.