Ta-Daa!! Shibori Dyed Napkins
October's extra special Crafternoon was a great success, no doubt in part due to our fabulous teacher, textile designer Rachel Zuch, and a great venue at Hamilton's HIRL, plus a whole bunch of lovely ladies getting their craft on. Thanks for making it awesome everyone!
The weather threw us a challenge or two with gale force winds threatening to blow our drying tarp away and more than a little rain, but we warmed up with copious tea, coffee and biscuits!
Everyone learnt 6 different techniques used in the Japanese tie-dying art of shibori, to produce a set of napkins that co-ordinate in colour and style but have different patterning. Those that favoured a more uniform look simply chose their favourite technique and did it on all 6 for a matching set.
Let's bask in the beauty of some of the finished napkin sets in all their glory...
Plus a couple from Instagram... tag us @mycrafternoons or #mycrafternoons to share yours!
Techniques included Itajame, which uses plastic shapes to produce resist patterns, Kumo, which involved pleating the fabric an binding small sections, and Arashi which involved wrapping the cloth around a pole, pipe or in our case, wine bottle!
*Note, no-one was harmed in the copious wine-drinking that happened before this event to free up so many empty bottles*
To try some of these techniques yourself google 'shibori dyeing' or check out the tutorials from Seamwork, Beyond Canvas or Honestly WTF 👏
Here are some of the pieces we produced before the workshop and how they turned out:
#1, an accordion-folded square with share Itajame shape...
#2, accordion-folded triangles, either dip dyed on two edges or dyed fully...
#3, a diagonally folded, twisted and bound sample...
#4, a napkin folded into quarters before fan-folding to produce this awesome chevron effect...
#5, napkins patterned using the Arashi pole (or wine bottle!) technique...
Finally, #6, using good old-fashioned tie-dye techniques to produce circular patterns like these...
Once washed and ironed, my finished napkin set look perfect and I can't wait to use them for my next dinner party.
I think everyone who attended is now officially addicted to Shibori- I know I'll be doing it again as I just LOVE the hands-on process and the excitement of opening up a bound piece of fabric to see how it turned out!
The next Crafternoon will be later this month on Sunday 17th November in Hamilton, hopefully around 10/11am until around 12/1pm- we're finally going to be learning Basket Weaving with a talented local lady... more details to follow soon!
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