CULTURAL STUDIES

JAPANESE SHIBORI

BEGINNING 3-D ART

recycled cotton sheeting, sharps needles, heavy sewing thread in "red", indigo vat

gloves optional

I love this assignment because I get to make a demo piece right along with the kids

and it's so creative, portable and therapeutic (relaxing).

I also really enjoy refreshing our indigo vats.

I keep two 5 gallon buckets going all year long.

And once you start one you can keep it going indefinitely.

I think my 1st bucket is going on 8 years now

since I first started teaching this assignment.

There are so many Shibori techniques to try.

I do folding and clamping with my 7th graders,

and hand stitched designs with my Beginning 3-D kids.

We make one practice piece and then each child makes an original design

with two or more of their favorite techniques they practiced.

That's what I'm sharing here,

their original, creative designs.

We start with the lovely piece above by senior Inna Sikar.

And below Inna's is her buddy Hana Kim's.

Both are so gorgeous and uplifting.

I especially love the varied shades of Indigo in each of the pieces.

The stitching of the design is fun and relaxing.

The most challenging part is the pulling and tying off of all the threads 

after all the stitching is done.

If you don't pull tight enough your design will disappear after all that stitching,

tying and dipping.

The one above was made by junior Kareema Mohamed

 and below hers is the work of junior Kiana Hernandez.

These two cuties sat right next to each other last year 

and it's so cool to see how different their designs are.

The next step after the pulling of the threads is the dipping of the crumpled up piece

 into the Indigo vat.

I try to refresh the vat with Pre-Reduced Indigo from Dharma Trading 

so that if the kids do at least 3 separate dips they will get a dark beautiful indigo blue.

What's really crazy is that I hate measuring out anything,

so I do it by eye and experience,

then I do a test before the students use the dye.

I usually get lucky.

It's kind of how I cook too,

Ha!

Above we have the work of senior Ricky Gallardo, 

and below is a banner by junior Dustine Ansiboy.

I so wish I could have enlarged Dustine's so you could have seen it better.

I love that she worked it into a elongated rectangular banner rather than square.

The young ones get to pick the size and format they wish to work too.

I always tell them don't bite off more than you can chew.

Mostly they don't listen to me on that one.

LOL

I also loved this circular piece by senior Sophie Yang above.

I felt that 8th grader Bhumika Kalaimalai put the most stitching into her original piece.

She stitched and pulled on this piece for hours!

And the result was amazing as you can see.

But one of my favorites was this one below by 8th grader Yusuf Karan.

I adore the flowers around the bunny.

So sweet!

And I also like all the values of blue he achieved.

It really adds to the beauty of the design.

Thank you all for working so hard on this assignment.

It was such a pleasure showing off your work.

xoxoox