From the category archives:

Process

Pinks and blues

May 2, 2010 Katazome

Last week the Crab Apple blossoms burst open all around our neighborhood, including the front yard. They come in shades of white to pink to fuschia. It’s the most beautiful time of spring. This year, everything seems to be blooming simultaneously — tulips,  crab apples, lilacs. Even the peony buds are starting to emerge! Meanwhile, [...]

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Expanding the square: stencil design warm-up

April 5, 2010 Miscellaneous

I’m beginning new stencil designs this week. To loosen up, I’m playing with paper, scissors and a glue stick, following some intriguing exercises in the book Notan: The Dark-Light principle of design.  This goal of the exercise below is to create symmetrical and asymmetrical balance by cutting shapes out of a basic 6×6″ black square [...]

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Blue Moons and dots

March 28, 2010 Katazome

It’s nearly full moon. I will savor three full moons this month — the two touchable blue moons I bought from Shibori Girl’s shop (one moon, one bookmark) plus the one bright moon in the sky. Along with my moons, Glennis gave me 3 design stencils for kanoko shibori” that she brought back from Japan. [...]

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Soaking up, catching on

March 7, 2010 Katazome

I ran out of rice paste working on a long piece of my minnows and mussels pattern with 2 repeats to go. With each experience like this I refine my understanding of the amount I need to make. Nevertheless I decided to go ahead and dye the work. I tend to make my rice paste [...]

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180 nails later …

February 25, 2010 Katazome

I’ve conquered procrastination (just this once) and have made a 40″ long set of harite. Each set I make gets longer. I started with 20″ wide. This set will allow me to stretch fabric up to 36″ wide. Every Sunday evening I make a little plan in my head about what I intend to accomplish [...]

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Light and dark: completed stencil

February 17, 2010 Katazome

I completed carving my new stencil today. I tinkered and tinkered with the design until I was satisfied with the shapes and curves. This is a repeating design along both horizontal and vertical axes, so I had the opportunity to work on registration skills following instructions on John Marshall’s new DVD, Journeys in Katazome: Stencils. [...]

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Major doodle

February 10, 2010 Katazome

Continuing the minnows and mussels design from the previous post, I created a half-drop repeat from my favorite variation (item C). This means the 2 units on the right side are offset on the vertical dimension by 50%. I doodled with my black marker to define the positive and negative parts of the basic unit. [...]

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Minnows and mussels … alive, alive-O

February 9, 2010 Katazome

Several moons ago I began to re-design my minnow stencil. I got back to the task last week with a lot of wheel spinning and not much progress. Over the weekend I perused some of my favorite design books (especially Principles of Pattern Design by Richard M. Proctor.)  I want the final stencil to be [...]

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Curing, soaking, frosty garden

January 31, 2010 Katazome

While preparing my stencil-dyed cloth for a soak in the tub this a.m., I noticed this frosty vision superimposed on the back yard. The fabric has been curing for about a week, hanging from the ceiling near a radiator. The backside shows the raised texture created by contrast between the dried rice paste resist and [...]

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Craving color

January 23, 2010 Inspiration

I was thinking today how monotone winter can be. This weekend it’s been raining, sleeting, the snow is dirty and the skies are dark gray. Then I found this photo I snapped a couple of weeks ago … I’m dyeing this work with fuchsia and turquoisey-teal, and where they overlap makes a kind of violet. [...]

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