Katazome Anyone?

Well, what do you do on the hottest two days of the year? You take a class in an un-air conditioned classroom! Good thing I spent many summers at Quilting by the Lake which didn't have air conditioned classrooms either. Our RAFA group took the opportunity to engage Karen Miller to teach us Katazome -- she had offered to teach on the east coast as part of a cross country camping trip she was making with her husband. Her website has some of the most amazing examples of her art!

Katazome is the art of making stencils which are used in the production of fabric in Japan. These stencils are cut from a special rice paper, treated and then can be used over and over for delicate and intricate stencilling of patterns. Today we spent the morning cutting our own stencils and then applying the first sealants to them so that they would dry by late afternoon.
Karen also mixed up the batch of rice paste which we used as a resist with her stencils later in the day and will use for our own tomorrow.

A potluck lunch was the next business of the day!

After lunch, Karen shared many examples of stencils as well as fabric that she had made or had purchased in Japan. Incredible work and now I know how the yucatas I have are made as well as many of the other traditional Japanese fabrics.

Believe it or not, this is one of my fabrics where I had applied the resist through one of Karen's stencils. When you see the final piece of cloth, there will be color where the white areas are and the dark areas will be white. You could do just the opposite and apply the dyes or paints directly through the stencils and then you would have a piece of cloth that looked like this finished. Karen cut all these stencils and many, many, many more -- incredibly intricate but she showed us fabric made by experts in Japan that make these look crude!

This is my second piece of fabric. The butterflies will stand out as white against a colored background. This was another of the stencils Karen had created.

More tomorrow! Can't wait to see how this all turns out! I can see how this "carving" of the stencils could be addictive as it is so easy with the rice paper.