Tag Archives: shibori

It’s a Fabric Wrap

I have painted pole wrapped fabric, and dyed a wrapped rope, and I’ve never been disappointed with the results, there is always something good that can come from them.

A few things to keep in mind – Traditional pole wrapping, Arashi shibori, is not what I’m doing. I use paints and don’t follow the correct wrapping and stringing process, so I realize my results will not look like the real thing. Paint stays more on top, whereas dye bonds and soaks through the wrapped layers.

I recently used rainbow colors and instead of my usually 4″ ABS pipe, I used three PVC pipes taped together, making a triangle. Here are pictures of the process, the result, and some finished works.

  • Spring and wet cotton fabric
  • Starting to wrap
  • Tie off the string
  • wet fabric and string compacted/pushed down to the pole.
  • Using a brush
  • Using a bottle
  • Remembered that I have foam pole holders for my larger pole.
  • Placed paper towel under pole. Placed outside to dry, I rotated it once in awhile.
This makes me think of the lower leaf filled branches of a tree. May have to try that all in greens sometime but turned it looks like fish. It’s like finding images in the clouds!

I usually put fabric under to catch the drips but this time I used several paper towels.

First paper towel caught the most, of course. This will be fun to use in collage.
  • Drift and Flow
  • Up Stream Photograph on Fiber series piece
  • Balance and the Brass Ring has the dyed rope wrapped fabric…
Dye does give a richer, more even, and more beautiful result. Paint is just easier for me.

Have you made any pole wrapped fabric?

Next time I’ll share at least one other painting on fabric techniques. Thanks for stopping by.

Fabric and Gunpowder!

I really enjoy the blog …And Then We Set It On Fire… The contributors are individual fiber artists who work in and explore a multitude of surface design techniques and more; sometimes working together. I once had the pleasure of being a guest artist on FIRE!

One of their recent blog posts did more than catch my eye. My interest was really sparked when I read that Kelly Hendrickson and Wil Opio Oguta, the two artists posting on FIRE this month, had been exploring the use of GUNPOWDER on fabric!

I have tried many different techniques over the years, here are some…

shibori opening detail
Shibori pole wrapped straight, using Jacquard Textile Color paints
anns shibori painted
Shibori pole wrapped on diagonal using Jacquard Textile Color paints
tube shibori
Shibori rope wrapped using dye

stamping, dripping, splattering, flour resist, stencil made on the sewing machine; painted and stenciled onto fabric made on a plastic tarp, rubbings with wax pastels, painted cheesecloth, melted Lutradur, burnt silk, just painting, and lots and lots of hand painted sky and landscape fabric… but never gunpowder!

curving printing silk gelli
drip stamped3
flour paste a4
flour resist 3
machine made stencil painted
machine made stencil
melt lutradur burn silk
rubbing paint wax pastels
fabric painting rose
sky fab assort

Kelly and Wil have publish an e-book the explores their gunpowder techniques (I just bought it!), I hope you will visit “…And Then We Set It On Fire…” and each of their websites – I think you’ll have a blast!

Thanks to Kelly and Wil for letting me share their gunpowder post!

Fabric Challenge and Swap

I was happy to learn that the fabric I submitted for the Quilting Art Fabric Challenge/Swap was published in their Dec 2016/Jan2017 magazine. They didn’t publish all of the submissions but I was impression by the variety and would love to be able to ask many of the artists how exactly they achieved their results.

quilting-arts-mag
forest-rays
Ann’s fabric

The way the challenge worked was for readers to create a fat quarter of fabric with original surface designs, submit it, and then they would receive a fat quarter made by another entrant. For more information see that QA link above.

I was so excited when I received a fat quarter created by Susan Price. Susan along with her business partner, Elizabeth, create original and custom Thermofax screens and sell their designs on Etsy at – PGFiber2art

s-price-fab-full
s-price-fab-detail
s-price-fab-back

Susan explained that the fabric I received was snow dyed, pole-wrapped (Shibori) and then thermofax screen printed using her original photo called Birds on a Branch. I think it is beautiful! Thank you, Susan.

A short time after I received Susan’s fabric I received a “thank you” email from Pat Robertson, who was the recipient of my challenge fabric. As I looked through the magazine again, I discovered that the fabric Pat submitted was also published so I asked Pat to send me photos of her fabric. Pat was kind enough to also send photos of her process too. The steps are – Pre-treated fabric, snow pile, dye applied, processing, fabric accepting the dye, rinse, and beautiful results! Thank you, Pat.

1-pretreated-fabric-p-robertson 2-snow-on-the-fabric-p-robertson 3-dye-placed-p-robertson 4-begining-to-melt-p-robertson 5-end-of-melting-p-robertson 6-rinsing-p-robertson 7-finished-fabric-p-robertson So you can see what wonderful results may come from playing with (and working) surface designs. I hope you will give it a try and if you do please share your results!