painted shibori

One of the pictures I showed in the previous blogpost was of fabric wrapped around a pole. The traditional way of doing shibori is to put the pole into a dyebath. The layers of fabric closest to the pole will absorb less dye than the layer at the outside. If you want to avoid that you can use a big pole or use paint instead of dye. I did not have a pole big enough, so I used paint on this piece of fabric. To do that you have to prepare your pole. When the fabric is scrunched down like you want it, you soak the fabric with tab water and let this dry completely. The next step is to unwind the thread and remove the fabric carefully from the pole and place it on top of a flat surface like this:

 With a foam brush I lightly applied turqois fluid acrylic paint from Golden on top of the fabric. As long as you do this carefully only the top ridges of the fabric will be touched by the paint. In this picture about half of the fabric was done:

 When the paint had dried, I ironed the fabric and this is how it looks now: