Xsilk Blog

This technique can be best understood if you imagine a combination of origami and dyeing.  Although this method creates geometric pattern, the pattern looks quite organic with soft edges and rich coloring. And once you get hang of it, you realize there are endless possibility in the variations of patterns.
  Itajime method can be...

Dyeing leather with indigo is a tricky business.  Leather and indigo don't always play nice.  It must also been an expensive project to undertake for indigo dyers in old Japan.  Katazome, is indigo pattern dyeing method developed in Japan.  To make the surface design on this wallet, first stencils were hand cut, then rice paste was applied to leather using the stencil.  Once the rice paste is dried, it acts like a dye resist.  Leather(with rice paste resist stenciled on) is dip dyed in indigo vat.  When rice paste is washed out, the parts once covered by the...

Shibori is a Japanese word for a kind of dyeing method.  Generally put, it's a kind of tie-dye.  Fabric is folded, tied, stitched or sandwiched between wooden blocks.  Then it is submerged into a dye bath.  When the bundle is unfurled, you get various pattern depending on the method you used to bundle the fabric.  Pattern can be geometric or organic, subtly nuanced or sharp.  Indigo bath was often used for Shibori method of dyeing.  

Itajime shibori is a method where wooden blocks are used to block out certain portion of fabric from accepting dye.  Fabric is folded, then...