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very nice and interesting.
verry beautiful. thank you about the info that the japany wear the indigo against the snakes and moskitos, the touareg do the same and what eva wrote is actualy the best what you can find in the relation between touareg and indigo
These are beautiful, Toya! I think that indigo is my favorite color- in all shades.
very lovely colors! I have heretofore only seen the dark, dull blue.
I love the blues here. The fabric is dipped in dye and held there for a few minutes, then taken out and exposed to light. This makes it turn blue, then dip again , out in the light again, back and forth many many times. Each exposure to light makes the blue darker. Without light it can be green, as seen in this picture.The darkest blue can appear almost black.
@Toya; thanks for the information, this is very interesting and I did not know (that exposure to the light makes it turn blue). I have a Howli (in Sonrai called Tungu (African dress that is wound around the body and the end around the head) which is about the light blue colour and the end part of it has this dark blue (almost black). I had no idea that this is also used in Japan! It looks a lot like the blue piece in the middle leftside.
Toya, are these yours? Did you make any of them? The shibori technique is used, right? Is the green also indigo? I especially love the one with the tri-colored rows of squares, but they are all so stunning. Are they silk or cotton? Sorry for all of the Qs, just very curious :-)
Hillary, I own two of these styles, the one you mention with tri-colored rows and another. Mine are cotton and I was allowed to dye them myself. I am told that silk takes a lot longer to dye. These are designed by the master indigo dyer at a shop in Kyoto called Aizenkobo. The green is indigo. This is the shibori technique of sewing tiny stitches in predetermined designs, then pulling the threads tight. Then hours of dipping in and out of the vats to get the dark blues.The master dyer creates the tie dye design and then has shibori artists do the actual thread work. Then the dyer does the dipping in the dye. It takes forever to pull all the threads out but when you do you see these beautiful designs.
For Hillary-Here is a link to the indigo shop Aizenkobo. An explanation about natural indigo is included. http://web.kyoto-inet.or.jp/people/utsuki/whats.htm
That is a wonderful website. Such variations in color are amazing. I had no idea that it took so many dips in the dye vat to get the deeper color. I guess the shibori technique is used in many countries. In Mauritania the women use it the long wraps that they wear. Sometimes when we get them, they still have the original, tight threading in them and it is very difficult to remove, but worth it when the designs are revealed.