more shibori

These handkerchieves were found in Yonezawa a town in Yamagata-ken in the northern part of Honshu, the main island.

Why did i go out there? Weaving and dyeing, of course! Along with its beef, toys and winter sports Yonezawa is also known for its indigo dyeing. And for being a very charming small town.

For Japanese standards these handkerchieves were inexpensive so i thought they might not be indigo, but now that i can read some Japanese it came as a very pleasant surprise to know they are real indigo! The top one is kumo shibori and the bottom one is an itajime. Notice the lovely greenish cast.

The left one is tazuna stitching and tsuki-dashi dots shibori and the right one is kumo shibori not ironed flat so it still holds the lovely raised texture. They are also indigo dyed.

This last one was bought in Tokyo in a small shop in Ya-Ne-Sen. It seemed unusual to me because the kumo dots were first wound to reserve the white of the cotton handkerchief, dyed a soft grey and bound again and dyed red, thus resulting in grey colored background kumo shibori. It was dyed with synthetic dyes, but that's ok :)

neki desu