A Day with Japanese Shibori for Beginners

This full-day experience will immerse you in the wonderful art of Japanese shibori. You'll learn some traditional Japanese shibori patterns and will dye organic cotton with real indigo, creating unique artworks for you to take home and display.

Sometimes known as ‘memory on cloth’, shibori is the tradition of shaped-resist dyeing. Shibori is all about learning to embrace imperfections and surprises, leaving behind that part of us that yearns for perfection and yearns for control.

In the West we became familiar with 'tie-and-dye', but shibori is so refined that it becomes something almost completely different. Through stitching, wrapping, pleating, folding and binding the cloth a whole range of beautiful patterns are possible. The ingenuity lies in its simplicity and yet the devil lies in the detail to create really crisp, clear and refined patterns.

You can expect a day of creativity, learning and the opportunity to create some beautiful shibori designs to keep. You'll head home with new textile art knowledge, some traditional dyeing skills and some of your own shibori artwork to keep.