Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Arashi Shibori with StencilGirl® Stencils!

Arashi -嵐
(Storm)
Hi, everyone! Cindy Lohbeck here! Excited to be sharing one of my favorite processes!

Arashi Shibori, or pole wrapped shibori, is a Japanese fabric dyeing method that leaves you with beautiful organic images like water, trees and lightning. Arashi literally translates to “Storm”.  I teach a class called “Pole Dancing” and had quite a stash of indigo patterns I wanted to make a quilt out of.

Lovely by themselves, but I wanted to play off of the water imagery, and knew just the StencilGirl® stencils I needed! These beautiful mermaid stencils look like they could swim through any of life’s storms!

Dextrin is a starchy byproduct of the process that extracts gluten proteins from products like wheat, corn, and for our project, potatoes! Potato Dextrin makes a fine crackled finish when used as a resist, and is the perfect consistency for screen printing. Mixed with a little hot water, this creamy paste dries and crackles to add just the right amount of interest for my simple indigo and white mermaids. Any leftover paste can be evenly spread across plain fabric to create a crackle companion to our Arashi and our prints.

Painting over the stenciled, dried and cracked potato dextrin with a thickened dye paint allows just the right amount of seepage between the resist and the dye to create wonderfully wabi sabi Mermaids to swim in my indigo ocean! You can thicken fiber reactive dye with sodium alginate, or begin with prink paste flakes.  The best part is that it all washes out with a little Dawn detergent!

As Arashi is dyed on poles, it tends to come in long thin strips, making it perfect for sashing. I love the motion and direction the Arashi creates when I surround my Mermaids with big wide bands. It creates pop and contrast, and makes our simple girls a little more interesting. A thin border of solid indigo really sets the patterns apart, and shows the versatility of Arashi Shibori.
Even though our Mermaid Babes have been a little Blue, I think they are enjoying splashing around in the storm! Every girl needs to make waves now and then!

If the world has seemed a little stormy lately, and you, too have been feeling blue, join Cindy in a 2 day live online workshop, where we will be exploring Pole Dancing and Potato Prints! September 18th & 19th, with lots of ongoing support on a private class Facebook page. Find out details on www.handsonhanddyes.com Follow Cindy at Hands On Hand Dyes on Facebook, or @DyehardinAZ on Instagram.

So many stencils to play with! So many creative possibilities! I think I will add some seashells in the next quilt!

1 comment:

  1. Love what you've done here! Who can resist those beautiful blues and mermaids, too! (Url needs '.com' added; as it is now, it goes to an error page.)

    ReplyDelete

If you are entering a GIVEAWAY, please add your email address in the event we need to contact you.

To avoid SPAM, please write it like this:

marybeth (at) stencilgirltalk (dot com)

Thank You!