“Shibori” derives from the Japanese verb shiboru, “to wring, squeeze, press.” The closest English translation would be “shaped-resist dyeing.” The shaping process reserves areas that are recorded as patterns with characteristically soft edges and crinkled textures when cloth is dyed. Rather than treating cloth as a two-dimensional flat surface, shibori techniques give it a three-dimensional form by folding, crumpling, stitching, plaiting, or plucking and twisting. Cloth may be drawn up and bound, stitched and gathered, pleated and bound, folded and clamped between boards, or wrapped around a pole then pushed along it to compress the fabric into folds. Further, a cloth may be dyed repeatedly using a different shaping method each time.

When the cloth is returned to its two-dimensional form after dyeing, the design that emerges is the result of the three-dimensional shape, the type of resist, and the amount of pressure from the thread or clamp that secured the shape during the cloth’s exposure to the dye. The cloth sensitively records both the form and the pressure; the “memory” of the shape remains imprinted in the cloth.

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