Shibori! Indigo dyeing workshop, part I

As I mentioned in my last post, the day job has been applying enormous pressure over the past several weeks, and it’s put me in a frustrating state of stress and fatigue that hasn’t left much time or energy for fabric-related creativity. I finally got a bit of a break over the weekend, however, with a wonderful two-day shibori indigo dyeing workshop with Akemi Nakano Cohn, sponsored by the 2013 Maiwa Symposium. Here are some of my creations:

I can’t rave enough about Akemi’s inspiring workshop. I’ve collected Japanese cottons for many years and know a fair amount about the dyeing techniques to produce them, but I had never had the chance to try indigo dyeing myself. After just two days with Akemi, however, I feel ready to forge ahead on my own, assuming I can figure out where to set up a dyeing station in our house. On the first morning, we learned how to mix the dye stock solution and prepare the dye bath, and then we embarked upon developing a wide variety of shibori techniques, including itajime (fold and clamp methods), nui shibori (hand stitching and gathering), kanoko and other tying/knotting techniques, plus arashi and bomaki (two forms of pole wrapping). We really covered a lot of ground in just two six-hour sessions!

Altogether, I dyed a dozen different samples. We started with itajime, and here are my first two pieces:

Can you see how they were dyed? Unfortunately, I didn’t take photos--too busy prepping fabric! Basically, itajime involves accordion pleating followed by clamping, which produces all manner of visual effects. In the piece on the right, which was my very first effort, I pleated the fabric lengthwise into twelve sections, and then pleated into fourths in the other direction, which gave me a small rectangular shape. I then clamped with chopsticks and rubber bands for a resist (which yielded the chevron lines that you see), plus some clothespins here and there for good measure. For the piece on the left, I pleated lengthwise in fourths, and then I pleated in an equilateral triangle shape and clamped with chopsticks. I also tried a pair of clothespins in each corner, but the folded fabric was too thick, and the clothespins basically fell off in every round of dyeing.

Both fabrics are a lightweight organic cotton from Maiwa Supply.  The first fabric went through the dye bath twice, while the second had four rounds of dyeing. Indigo dyeing requires multiple rounds of dipping in order to produce dark colors, so it requires a lot of patience.  It's hard to resist the temptation to unwrap your fabric prematurely to see how the dyeing pattern looks! I’ll say more about what it was like to work with the dye bath in a later posting. Stay tuned!

Creative necessity

The pressures of the day job have been getting to me lately, especially since too many work obligations have left me without the time and energy for quilting over the past few weeks.  I get frustrated and stressed when I don't have time for creative contemplation, and last night I couldn't sleep for all the thoughts spinning in my head.  Basically, I'm not happy if I'm not creating.  Finally, around 1:30 a.m. I just got out of bed to work on a quilt that I started imagining back in August for VMQG's latest challenge. 

I spent about forty minutes or so cutting fabric and piecing before going to bed, and I continued with another forty minutes or so of sewing this morning.  I didn't work on the actual challenge quilt, but a small preliminary study in order to experiment with raw edge applique.  For me, the challenge fabrics immediately inspired a vision of scattered leaves across a pieced background, and with the preliminary study, I'm trying to see if I can bring that vision to life.  Here's the quilt thus far:

It feels so good to be creating again.  I will sleep well tonight!

Defense!!

I went downstairs to my sewing room one evening a couple of weeks back, and here's what I found:

Aaack!  I'd been had, yet again!

Today I took defensive action, by going to Ikea for some of the hooks that hang over the edges of cabinet doors:

The idea is that fabrics in use for current projects now hang, rather than sitting in a tempting pile on my cutting table.  We'll see if this system actually works in practice--I'm not optimistic about my ability to put things away at the end of my sewing sessions, even in this minimal fashion.  But it beats the constant resort to the lint roller, and maybe as an added bonus, my fabrics won't get as wrinkled.

Piecing at a snail's pace: WIP Wednesday

Progress on my heron quilt is so incremental that I think it will get monotonous if I keep showing the view of the whole thing, so I'm just going to provide photos of little segments and hints until the entire top is done.  This past week, I finished the top left part, and I put together another unit of curved flying geese:

The flying geese are made from an exquisite piece of yukata fabric that I bought many years ago from Kasuri Dyeworks, the fabulous Japanese fabric store that used to be in Berkeley, CA.  Alas, Kasuri Dyeworks closed when store founder Koji Wada and his wife Debbie decided to move to Wyoming for their retirement, and sadly, Koji passed away just a few years later.  He was a wonderful man, with tremendous knowledge of and passion for Japanese textiles.  Kasuri Dyeworks apparently still makes it to a few select quilt shows, however, and I keep dreaming of going down to the Road to California one of these years in the hopes of purchasing a big bundle of intricately dyed yukata and katazome cottons.  Maybe January 2014?

In the meantime, the heron quilt is slow going because I'm also trying to do more sewing for my Etsy shop.  I managed to make a couple of drawstring pouches, plus I prepped fabric for a couple of ID holder wristlet coin purses.  Here's one of the pouches, in pale green vintage kimono silk, with a gorgeous butterfly and hollyhock design:

The quest for organization continues as well, especially my determination to use every bit of spare space to its best effect.  I noticed that the end of my pine frame bookcase underneath my cutting table wasn't doing anything useful, and I had a scrap of peg board that was just the right width, so I screwed it to the exposed end of the bookcase.  For a bit of perspective, here's the before photo:

And here's the close-up afterwards, underneath the table:

Now there's finally a good place to store rulers, plus a few other odds and ends, including the funny little stuffed brain cell that my sister gave me a while back.  I might paint the pegboard and the back of the cabinetry under my cutting table someday, but not before next summer.  For now, the utilitarian look will have to do.  Kudos to the Ellison Lane Sewing Studio Spotlight, in which so many of the studios demonstrated the virtues of pegboard, not to mention how fresh and cheerful it can look if painted in bright colors.

My day job is about to speed up again, so I might not have any quilting progress to show for a while, especially since I absolutely must put sleeves and labels on three quilts that are going to the Northwest Quilting Expo in Portland, as part of a special exhibit of quilts by the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild.  Hope the rest of you out in the blogosphere will enjoy a lot more sewing time.  Happy quilting, everyone!

Slow and not so steady: WIP Wednesday

Where did the week go?  And what happened to summer?  Earlier tonight it was rainy and horribly windy--it sounded like mid-October outside, and now the temperature has dropped significantly.  I'm hoping we'll still have some good weather, but at the moment it really seems as if Vancouver's short summer has already come to a close, a good two weeks earlier than usual.

The day job kept me much too busy this past week, so I didn't have nearly as much time for sewing as I would have liked.  I did manage to make a little progress on my heron quilt, by starting work on the upper left corner.  I hadn't done any paper piecing in years, but the technique seems made for free form flying geese.  I also thought the quilt would be monotonous if I stuck to blue fabrics, so I'm starting to throw in some flecks of red.  Here's this week's piecing:

And here's what the creative process looks like on my new design wall, combined with fabric chaos in the foreground:

I also had fun making a fabric bag for scrap storage, as part of my ongoing drive for organization.  It certainly beats the plastic shopping bags that I usually use:

Happy sewing, and may all of your WIPs bring you creative energy and enthusiasm!

The final tally

Plum season 2013 has come to a close.  The final count: 207, give or take a handful.  That's well below last year's crazy bumper crop, but still an excellent harvest for our one little tree.

Here in Vancouver, the weather is already cooler and cloudier, the days are noticeably shorter, and the start of a busy semester is looming.  Fall is just around the corner, but I will hold onto summer until the bittersweet end.

What's big, orange, and furry, but smaller than a breadbox?

Our younger cat!

Actually, I can't say with absolute certainty that she's smaller than a breadbox, but at least she's smaller than a breadbox box: