Re-visiting Shibori

Today was the monthly meeting of my fibre art support group, who call themselves The Fibre Art Divas.  Under that name they are recognized a a group to watch.  They currently have one travelling exhibition, Prairie Perspectives, and a second one, Home Is..., currently being organized.  Our meetings are a lively exchange of ideas, as well as a genuine critique session that the members trust.

Today the question came up about how we use the fabrics we create with Shibori, or Eco-dying and printing, or anything else where we make significant changes in the appearance of the surface of the fabric.

In response to that discussion I would like to discuss a couple of the pieces I have created with my Shibori dyed fabrics.  I had a wonderful "how-to" book that I used as a resource in all by Shibori dyeing, but can't find it, nor do I remember the title and author.  Also missing is the correct terminology for some of the techniques I used.  My apologies.

My first effort consisted of overdyeing some previously dyed fabrics using a basic Shibori clamping technique.  I then added leaf prints to some areas for focal interest.There is one piece of pole wrapped Shibori, but at the time, I really wasn't sure how to use it in a piece.

The next piece was made using nothing but hand-stitched Shibori pieces.  I had far more than I could use, so chose pieces based on a colour scheme.  This piece has a great deal of hand quilting to complement the stitch, based dyed areas.

The third piece was made with pieces selected from my "stash" purely on the basis of colour.  It includes some stitched, some pole wrapped and some folded and clamped sections.  It is completely machine quilted.

Lastly, I put together a lot scraps from the previous efforts, using a colour scheme again.  Do you sense that I have an affinity for a blue red or blue green analogous colour scheme?  This piece was quite "blah" until I added the purple circles.  This addition completed the analogous colour scheme and totally changed the finished effect.  It is machine pieced, machine quilted and the circles are fused applique.

Now I'm worried that this whole trip down memory lane may result in more Shibori work.  Whoops!

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network, as well as Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday