Thursday, September 9, 2010

Simple Shibori

Yes - I'm still playing with my Liquitex Inks. Today's experiment uses the transparent umber and incorporates the concept of shibori. I took a 12 inch square of wet white cotton fabric and folded it fan-like in 1 inch folds. Using a paint brush I applied the umber ink, full strength, to the folded edges of the fan - it was a heavy application.
This morning I decided I wanted to add more ink to achieve better coverage so I re-wet the fanned fabric and surprisingly there was a discharge of ink as you can see here on the paper towel. I did not heat set the ink before wetting.

Here is my final result - I used a good deal of ink and expected more color. I'm finding the transparent umber ink gives the appearance of tea staining.
A close up for you.
Here's a piece of commercial novelty fabric covered with images of postage stamps - long live the Queen!
And here is that fabric with an application of the transparent umber - it lends an antiqued appearance to the fabric. The upper half of the fabric was treated with full strength ink, the lower half was treated with diluted ink

Now, back to shibori - I wonder what the crimson ink will do in a shibori application. I'm using a very wet circle of organdy folded in a pie-fold. My ink dipping bath consists of one part ink to one part water. I dipped the outer edges only. I cannot wait until tomorrow morning to open up this experiment!

1 comment:

Jessica said...

i haven't even opened my umber yet, so it's good to know a little of what to expect! The tea dye feel will be very useful to me as i love aging papers and fabrics. Good stuff to know!

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