Weaving with indigo blues is one of her most interest recently. She creates different shades of blue using her indigo vat.
Indigo blue with Alpaca wool
This very special handwoven IKAT shawl is made with Japanese textured silk and Peruvian alpaca wool. These materials are very warm but at the same time light and soft. A unique characteristic of Japanese textured silk is that it has a variable thickness along the yarn, with some very thick parts that look like knots. The Peruvian alpaca wool is very fine. These colour are undyed, mixed by different colours of original alpaca hairs.
The weaving made by IKAT technique which is one of most famous traditional type of weaving around the world.
The warp dyed followed two different techniques; the warp was separated into 20 separate hanks, and some of them were partially dyed while others were immersed in the dye a different number of times to create different shades, creating gradually changes of colours in the shawl, and also patterns appear and disappear gradually due to the weaving technique.
TAFU weaving
with kuzu and linen
One of the oldest handwoven fabrics in Japan is called “TAFU”, which is traditionally woven using Kouzo (paper mulberry), Fujizuru (wisteria vine), Kuzu (Japanese arrowroot), Cyoma (ramie), amongst others. These yarns are made by using fibres from the stem, under the hard external bark. The extraction requires a lot of processing and for this reason, TAFU almost disappeared in Japan. I have been always interested in traditional techniques and I often wonder how the very first yarns were made. This work is woven using Kuzu yarn from Japanese farmer and hand spun linen from Slovenia.
This work was a part of exhibition, "Roots" at the Free hand weaver studio in London in 2021.
