Woven Shibori Workshop

Our Woven Shibori Workshop was originally scheduled in March and was to be preliminary  to our dye day in May where we would dye our woven shibori pieces.  But we found that Kathrin Weber was going to be close by so we enjoyed a workshop with her and postponed our shibori workshop until today.  Normally the guild doesn't have events in the summer, but it was nice to break with tradition and try our hands at something new. 

Workshop weavers had warped their looms in advance with a cellulosic fiber of some sort.  We watched a bit of Diane Totten's video on Crimp Cloth and then set about to weave our own, using drafts provided in the Catharine Ellis book, Woven Shibori.

Since there was polyester available, several people selected some for weft and will steam their pieces for permanent pleats.  In the photo below, the warp is green cotton and the weft is polyester in a brownish green.  The shibori pulling threads are on the white bobbin.  Karen wove the sample shown here, changing the number of picks of ground cloth between shibori pull threads.  It will be interesting to see how this will affect the pattern.  There are several choices for this cloth.  It can be dyed and/or steamed for a permanently pleated fabric.







Lorene chose a diamond pattern for her shibori pulling threads - see the photo below.  She purposely chose a thicker pulling thread so that there may be small holes left after she has finished her piece which will add an interesting dimension to her cloth.  She intends to paint her piece with dye once she is finished weaving and the threads have been pulled.



Susan decided to use a polyester weft which will give her permanent pleats. Her pulling threads are close together which means there will be lots crimps here in the finished cloth.  Here again, she could also apply dye, if she chooses because her warp is cotton and will accept fiber reactive dyes.

  

We had several guild members drop by to show examples of woven shibori that they had woven and dyed in the past.  Virginia brought a piece of multishaft cloth that she had woven and was busy pulling the threads in preparation for dye work.







 

12/6/16  Here is an update with several photos to show how the projects turned out.  The blue scarf was woven and dyed by Nancy S.  She used instant indigo and was pleased with the gentle patterning which will go perfectly with blue jeans.

 The scarf below was woven by Sue M.  She used a polyester weft for part of the scarf (the pink section) and then dyed her piece with fiber reactive dyes and steamed it.

  

There was a demonstration warp on Beryl's Wolf Pup at the class of mercerized green cotton.  The weft was a beige/green polyester.  This is a photo of the resulting scarf - dyed with fiber reactive dyes and steamed to permanently pleat the material.