Shibori at The Festival of Quilts

Following on from the last post on Shibori I was looking at the Festival of Quilts website (organised by Twisted Thread), which is at the NEC in August and noticed there is a workshop on Sunday 19th August by Yoshiko Wada. She is a Japanese Shibori textile artist and her workshop looks very interesting..

"..Students will experiment ways to enjoy fun and vibrant elements and unconventional piecing. We will explore how a variety of fabrics like wool, silk, rayon, and polyester react differently, achieving transparency, texture, depth, and thickness. Animated sculptural results may amuse you. Simple shibori dye techniques will be applied after sewing the final piece..."

The Festival of Quilts is a quilt show not to be missed. Each year more and more customers book for multiple days just to be able to see the quilts, exhibitions, attend workshops and lecture and ...buy supplies! It is a great opportunity to be inspired and learn new techniques.

For more information please visit the Twisted Thread website.

Shibori - a Japanese Technique

We had an interesting customer visit the shop last Saturday to buy the Grace Z44. She was finding it difficult to get the tension on her quilts right for the particular technique that she uses. She has studied the Japanese technique called Shibori. An example of one of the results from her workshop is shown below.

Relief I - detail
(Image: Huw Jones)

For those of you not familar with this, it is a Japanese technique which involves tying, shrinking and working with fabric so that the fabric form retains the memory of the stitches which are removed. Michelle Griffiths has a wonderful website with example of her work. "Her work explores the natural rhythm of traditional shibori techniques in order to create contemporary three dimensional sculptures. Working predominantly in whites and creams Michelle records the actions found within shibori; stitching, binding, gathering, manipulating and folding - not through the expected dye process, but purely as texture and form." Her website is at http://www.shibori.co.uk/

Currently on exhibition

- "Art of the Stitch & Scholar

"The Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead

(Image: Pinegate Photographics)

We were fascinated by the effects and results of this technique that is not that well known outside of Japan. If you are interested in finding out more you can visit http://www.shibori.org/