6/13/07

I'm working on a huge scarf a customer asked me to make for her - two carp, tail to tail. I made two large mirror-image stencils of carp several years ago, and have used them to make windsocks and T-shirts, but this scarf is a new idea and I think a great one. In a spirit of experimentation, I tried pasting the image on one side of the scarf, then after it dried, flipping the fabric over and pasting it again on the exact reverse, in hopes of having the scarf look the same on each side. So far the experiment is of limited success - the first pasting of the carp had shrunk a bit so the second pasting was not exactly the same, making for some fuzziness and double images. I do think that what I'm attempting is possible - I know the Japanese paste some of their fabrics on both sides so that the fabric is reversible. It seems an ideal solution for scarves. Of course if the scarf is of a very thin silk, such as chiffon, it looks the same on both sides anyway, but this scarf is of a heavy crepe. 

A lesson I have to learn over and over is that haste, in this business of katazome, really does make waste. How many times have I tried to move a piece by myself while the paste is still all gooey? The slightest wrinkling of the fabric and the paste smears. Now that I've been at this for quite a few years I am getting a bit more patient, but just yesterday I wanted to move a piece out of the way so I could do some more pasting. My husband, who also works at home, was here but I'd already interrupted him a number of times to help me move fabric around. So, against my better judgement, I picked up a 24 inch by 3 yard piece of fabric all covered with rice paste and naturally I ruined the whole thing. Here I declare in public that I will, I will, I will be more patient!

Afterword

I decided I couldn't stand the double image and fuzziness on the carp scarf, and rinsed out all the paste rather than wasting the 3-yard piece of silk. So I'll start over. Meanwhile, I learned that when the Japanese do double-sided pasting, they paste the first side of the cloth on a board, then wait until it's entirely dry before flipping the cloth over to do the second side, hence eliminating the paste-shrinking problem I had.