Miura Shibori - Intensive and Amazing
Shibori Dyeing resist techniques are often simple, but also often intensive. Miura Shibori involves lots of worthwhile patience and time and I'm excited to share the spectacular results with you!
At our Wisconsin Indigo Gathering at Circle of Life Studio, we explored many techniques and types of Shibori dyeing together and Miura was one of my favorites. This is a bound resist technique and we started with a curved needle designed especially for Miura.
We gathered small, closely-set, tufts of fabric, then used the needle to tightly wrap cotton twine around each tuft. The binding twine acts as a resist to the dye. Sometimes thousands of tufts are created for a single piece of Miura Shibori. I decided to work on just one end of my fabric and, although it was a lot of binding, it wasn't a thousand in my case!
It was a really enjoyable, rhythmic stitching and binding experience and a lovely way to spend time with other Shibori artists. The picture above shows my Miura piece once it was ready for the dye vat.
My Miura piece was in good company with the other pieces that my fellow artists prepared for the dye vat!
Takayuki Ishii, our mentor for the Indigo Gathering, prepared a Sukumo Indigo Vat for us. Sukumo is prepared from fresh Indigo leaves that are dried, crushed and composted for a very long time. A vat is made with other ingredients and fermented for about 10 days before the dye is ready. We were very grateful to Taka for preparing this type of vat for us. The deep blue it produced was exquisite!
And, then. . . the dyeing process was complete and the breathtaking results were ready! There's always a magical moment when a piece is unbound and revealed and I was just thrilled with mine.
Taka's wife, Tomo, graciously showed us how to hand stitch a Bokuro shopping bag from our Miura piece. The Bokuro is a traditional Japanese design crafted from just one length of fabric. They all turned out beautifully and I will certainly treasure using mine.
To read more about our Wisconsin Indigo Gathering, click here to read my blog post. I have more to share with you from the gathering too so, keep watching!
If you're ready to start your own Shibori Indigo dyeing or in need of more supplies, click here to visit the supply section of my web site. I have everything you need!
DEBBIE
Use the links below to follow me every day!
Leave a comment