Saturday 13 August 2011

Arrow Stencil Obi






Santa went shopping at the Swiss Antique Market across the Rhine River and picked out a particularly solid roll of antique cotton. (Thank you Barbara for showing him the way.) Not wasting any time I started cutting out a stencil of flowing arrows the next evening.



The cloth was pasted and stenciled and dipped six times in the indigo. Then washed and iron and re-pasted with the stencil slightly offset and dipped twice to get a lighter shadow. The third time around the stencil was shifted more and dyed with persimmon tannin ten times. The red color came from the pigment I put in the paste to make it more visible when shifting and re-pasting.
The fourth time around I carved out a different wave pattern stencil and more persimmon dying. You can see it clearly as the reflective area below.





It was stitched up as an obi for a summer kimono.

3 comments:

  1. I love the way the patterns played on the cloth. Hope you still have the original pattern. Love to try it...

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  2. I love this pattern, I hope you kept the stencil I would like to try it...

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  3. Beautiful! The pattern would be great in almost any colorway.

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