Shibori Tutorial
When I was at Plaid Crafts headquarters in April we did a SUPER fun Faux Shibori Scarf project that I thought I’d share with you guys today. What is Shibori, you ask? Well google tells us:
“Shibori is a Japanese dyeing technique that typically involves folding, twisting or bunching cloth and binding it, then dyeing it in indigo.”
And once you see my tutorial today, you’ll see that that definition is EXACTLY what we’re going. It’s REALLY fun and it’s kind of like a more sophisticated way to tie dye something! This tutorial is a more simplified Shibori Tutorial that would be a fun summer craft idea with your kids or something you could do for a girls night out craft idea!!
Shibori Tutorial
Supplies:
Bin or Tub to pour dye into
Gloves
Wooden Square
Rubber Bands
Bottle for water and paint
Scarf or other white fabric of choice
How to Faux Shibori
Your first step is to fold your scarf! Shibori folding techniques vary, but here’s how we did our square shibori folds for this project. You start by using your square (you determine the size) as a guide to start accordion folding your fabric in one direction back and forth until the end.
Once you get the folding done one way accordion style, then you do it the other direction the same way until you get your fabric into a nice little square.
Your next step is to tightly wrap the fabric against the square so it holds its shape during dyeing.
Next comes the fun part where you don your gloves and get to dying! You’ll want to fill your bottle up with Fabric Creations Paint and then the rest with water and shake really well. I’d say to use about half the bottle of paint.
Once your paint is mixed up well, you hold your fabric over your bin or tray and saturate the fabric with the Fabric Creations paint.
Once you’re done, with a partner, start to unfold your scarf carefully and hang someplace to let dry for 24 hours (look at my face as I try not to mess up my scarf! LOL).
AMAZING, right!? It was SO cool to see everyone’s shibori designs as they unfolded their scarves!
Shibori folding patterns are really unique to each individual creator, so you’ll notice that each of us (all the Plaid Creators that is) had a really unique design of our own based off our own shibori folding techniques. Some of us had more blue, more white, more space between squares or less space between squares…it just depends on how you fold your fabric!
In the end, we all came out with really different and unique Shibori Scarves, but that’s the fun of the whole project! You never know how it will end up, which is the beauty of making something handmade!!
This is just one of MANY fun projects I did at Plaid Crafts in Atlanta a few months ago, more fun to come soon!!
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