The Six Main Types of Shibori

There are widely thought of to be six major Shibori techniques. Of course, not all textile artists agree, and there’s a lot of combinations you see out there that are difficult to pin down as being exactly one technique or the other. Don’t get too caught up in the nomenclature unless you’re writing a scholarly article! Just experiment with what looks good to your eyes and what kinds of techniques your hands want to try. Personally, stitching Nui Shibori makes me feel restless and anxious, even though I love sewing. As a dye artist I almost always want to do Itajime Shibori, where you fold your cloth and then clamp things onto it. There’s no wrong way to discover your own favorites!

1. Kanoko Shibori

Kanoko is a Japanese word meaning “cloth dyed in a dappled pattern” or “pattern of dappled white spots,” like the spots on a fawn. Kanoko Shibori is amazing to me because you see it in textile traditions from other parts of the globe— maybe because it’s so simple and natural to the human hand! In Kanoko Shibori you take little pinches of fabric and wrap string (or rubber bands) tightly around the base of each little “ponytail.” In tie-dye class we call this the jellyfish and we do it with rubber bands. I was amazed to also see it everywhere in western India; over there it’s called Bandhani. The tighter you tie, the more of a resist it creates. You can create big circles or teeny little circles; you can cover the whole cloth or you can just put them in certain areas. I love that humans have invented this same technique and design in very different parts of the world.

2. Kumo Shibori

Kumo means “spider” or “cloud”! Imagine your tiny Kanoko pinched circles… but this time make them taller and longer, and tie up the whole length of each one, as if you were wrapping your entire ponytail up with string from the base to the tip. If you tie tightly, there will be a lot of white space, because even more fabric is trapped inside your pinched up fabric. After being dyed, the result inside each tightly bound point looks like a beautiful spiderweb!

3. Nui Shibori

Nui means to sew, to stitch, a sewing needle, etc. Nui Shibori, or “stitched Shibori” is fun because you get to create the resist on your cloth in any shape that you can stitch up! You take a row of stitches and pull the fabric, cinching it up tightly, before immersing it in your dye bath. The resist comes from where the fabric was pulled so tightly, the dye couldn’t penetrate the fibers in those sections. Most dyers start with long wavy lines or patterns when first attempting Nui Shibori. Hint: try tracing out patterns with a washable marker before you start stitching! That will help guide you as your fabric gets pleated up, which can be confusing.

4. Miura Shibori

Similar to Nui, Miura Shibori is also known as looped binding. Using a hooked needle, and plucking sections of the fabric, the artist .The released pattern resembles water ripples. The pattern achieved depends on how tightly the fabric is bound and where it is bound, so there’s a lot of variation possible in this (and every other) Shibori technique. I have a piece of cloth from West Africa that looks like it was tied and dyed in this way!

5. Arashi Shibori

Arashi Shibori was my first ever Shibori technique that I ever learned. At the summer camp where I taught tie dye, candle making, and batik, we also had a staff member who was a self-taught expert on simple shibori projects for kids. We had the maintenance staff cut us lots of pieces of PVC pipe from the hardware store, and the campers got to wrap long silk scarves around and around the pipes before we tied them up tightly, scrunching them down as much as we could. This is Arashi, or pole-wrapping, Shibori! You can make your Arashi designs as quick & simple or as delicate and detailed as you want. Lots of Arashi Shibori artists like to leave the textured pleats in their finished projects, never ever ironing them flat.

6. Itajime Shibori

Itajime Shibori is currently my favorite to do. It’s fast, easy to teach, and gets you really bold, clear designs each time. It’s a great bang for your buck, especially if you like lots of white space in your design! In Japanese, Itajime literally translates to “method of making patterns via pressing cloth between carved boards.” First you fold your cloth, usually like an accordion or fan fold, and then you tie or clamp resists onto both sides. It can be as simple as two big popsicle sticks, or you can get fancy with clear acetate shapes that are purpose-built for resist dyeing. Or, you can just grab whatever is handy; I’ve done Itajime with hardware store washers, with old AOL CDs (showing my age here), and random blocks of thin, strong plywood from my partner’s pile of discarded wood scraps.