Workshop with Nancy Crow - 2nd week

Last Friday my second function here in Falera began, after all, I am not here for pure entertainment. I am the interpretor for two Shibori workshops taught by Jan Myers-Newbury. During those times when Jan is not doing a lot of explaining but the participants have to work, wrapping poles, packing or clamping, taking care of the dye baths or whatever I jump over to the other building where the sewers are at work and try to get a bit of my own work done inbetween. Of course a constant change of scene does not really give me good opportunities to work as concentrated on my pieces as the other participants can. However, I can be pretty focussed even in short periods of time, so I am pretty happy with this arrangement. Otherwise I would not have been able to come here at all. In fact, I am learning a lot about Shibori that way and have the feeling that I am getting the best of two worlds that way.

The cut-up top from last week found Nancy’s approval and looks like this right now:

And that assignment that I did not have time for at the end of last week is already growing in my mind, I will try to put it into fabric as soon as possible after my return.

Over the weekend I spent most of the time with the Shibori class. Über das Wochenende war ich zu großen Teilen bei den Färberinnen im Kurs. Without being an active participant in the class myself I have already understood why my own attempts at Shibori from last summer were not very successful, which I had started after reading Janice Gunner’s book on shibori techniques.

I am certainly going to try more after I return home.

Let me show you a few impressions from the Shibori-class. The pieces are hung up to dry on the line in the school yard after rinsing, and because there is mostly a light wind they are dry in not time at all.

In Nancy’s class we have again started sewing in black and white. However, we progressed to colous today, and my current design for this exercixe looks like this:

I will start putting it into colour tonight.