shibori.

the past couple of days i have had the ancient japanese tradition of folding, stitching, wrapping, resisting and dyeing fabric known as shibori on the brain. i spent a couple of days researching and prepping my fabrics and yesterday did the dip ;) i did not use authentic indigo (:::pause::: what a beautiful word-i love it) for this first attempt...it's very hard to get ahold of here. i used a denim blue (indigo is traditionally used to dye denim, so i thought this would be the closest approximation) and am very happy with the results. basically, i was inspired by these ladies, began researching and ended up using this tutorial as a guideline as well as experimenting with my own pattern making. let me tell you, yesterday when i was unravelling my just rinsed creations to put on the line, my fingers stained blue...i felt like a pirate opening a long-searched for treasure chest...i could not have been happier with each reveal. i swear i was shaking a little. simply buzzing.

here i used screws with heads and wrapped thread around them:

these are rocks with elastics tied around them. i now know that i prefer the pattern on the underside, so would next time do these the opposite way:

this is a technique i 'made up'...i folded the fabric like an accordion and then clamped it with clothes pins.   i really loved this result:

the incredible mess of which there is miraculously no sign of today:

ta da!!

i really like the gradation effect on the duvet cover:

pride of place :) too bad they are a lot lighter dry than wet:

you can see the clothes pin result in the bottom left corner of this image:

and for a special little someone:

back:

and for someone who has one more month before they enter this big, bright world:

back:

i realize that there are 90 year old Japanese grandmother shibori masters out there that would put my crafting afternoon to absolute shame (exhibit A), but for a first attempt...what do you think?  feedback welcomed please!!