Woven shibori wowza!

I finished weaving, tying, and dyeing today.  And wowza!  It’s probably possible to make woven shibori ugly, but I haven’t managed it so far.  (Well, except the one time when the dyes didn’t “take”, but that was a dyeing issue, not a design one!)

Because I tried out six different patterns, and wanted to show closeups of each, I decided to print out a small copy of the profile draft for the ties and photograph it with each sample.  So I did, and here they are:

woven shibori, ties floating alternately over back and front in rectangular pattern

woven shibori, floats alternating with plain weave in blocks

woven shibori, ties alternating with plainweave, alternating front and back floats

woven shibori, complex block pattern of front/back floats and plainweave

woven shibori, attempt at diamond pattern

woven shibori, diamonds mixed with plainweave

I painted it with Polar Red and Lanaset Royal Blue dyes, blue on one side and Polar Red (fuchsia) on the other.  What glorious shades of color!!  (Not entirely surprising, though.  I’ve done samples of virtually every two-color combination in the Lanasets, and selected those two colors because they produce a gorgeous purple.  So this is not just good luck!)

Anyway, how woven shibori works is starting to get clearer, but I need to sit down and really think about these samples (especially the failed attempts at diamonds) before I can “get” it.

Next I will try combining shibori patterns with patterns woven into the cloth.  This becomes complex very rapidly, so I will try to keep things simple – perhaps just a single diamond woven in the center of a square motif.

And maybe, after sampling, I’ll go back to plainweave.  This last set of samples is plainweave, and would probably look way too “busy” in any other structure.

Tomorrow’s my weaving study group – can’t wait to share these samples with the other study group members!