Folding and Clamping: Itajime

I’ve really enjoyed trying some new (to me) techniques with my dyeing. Itajime, a shibori technique, involves folding fabric and then sandwiching it between two pieces of wood or other material and holding the shapes with clamps.

Itajime fabric
My Itajime pices

I bought these plexiglass pieces for this technique. You can get your own set from this Rossie’s etsy shop where she has lots of different sizes and shapes.

itajime shapes

There are lots of ways to fold the fabric. I wanted to try the equilateral triangles. Fabric is folded in half lengthwise, then folded again, and then fan folded into triangles. After folding, I clamped them with bulldog clamps. Since I didn’t have enough for all of my pieces, I used string to secure the last one.

itajime Now to dye them. You can soak the pieces in the soda ash solution before you add the dye. You can also soak them in water, add the dye, and then add soda ash. The other option is to dye them with the fabric dry and then add soda ash. The last option is not a good one. It was hard to add the dye to dry fabric. I did that with two of the four pieces and I won’t be doing that again.  I added dye with pipettes until I was happy with the colors. Here they are sitting in the sun.

itajime2

I let these batch for 24 hours since I was too busy to wash them out earlier. Here are the original folded pieces and my results.

itajam1

 

itijami fabric

itajam3

itijami3fabric

itjam2

 

itijame2fabric

itjam4itijami4fabric

That was fun. My favorite is the second one. Which one do you like best? Thanks for dropping by.