Are the highly specialized Japanese Shibori Tools Worth it?

I couple of years ago, I took an “Art on the Meadow” workshop at Ox-Bow School of Art in Michigan. The Art on the Meadow classes are the shorter, more affordable workshops for locals, as opposed to the week-long, residential workshops. The photos above are from the workshop, taught by Sue Cortese.

The teacher taught us to use the steel tools from Japan for tying specific shibori ties, such as the tool for kumo.

Here’s the shibori I folded and dyed in that class using the “hook for kumo” tool. (I’m looking for a more official name for this.)

Te-kumo Shibori dye by Elaine Luther, 2024.

If you don’t have this tool, you can approximate this “spiderweb” pattern by using a small dowel rod, or cooking chopstick, placing your fabric over that and tying it up with string. Here are some examples of my attempts at that:

Shibori dyes by Elaine Luther.

It’s a pretty stark difference, isn’t it? The first one has more consistent pleating, which is what the tool gives you, the ability to hold the fabric taut, while still having two hands to manipulate the fabric and wrap the string around it.

The second two look more like American tie-dye, which is fine, but that wasn’t what I was going for.

My verdict is yes, it is worth it.

If you buy the full set up, with the stand, it’s a bit expensive. If you buy just the hook, it’s much more reasonable, in the ballpark of $25.00 depending on the exchange rate and where you can find it in stock.

I bought just the hook, and managed to rig it up at my jeweler’s bench and that worked fine.

Tonight, I was looking into sources for this tool, and others, to share with my students, and I found a seller with a clever, and affordable work around.

Atelier Miyabi sells the hook in a kit (or by itself), check out the last photo – where they’ve installed a C-clamp on a table and tied the hook to it! So simple!

Check out all their tools and books – they have some hard to find (in the U.S.) books on shibori and indigo that have been translated into English. They ship internationally.

They also sell the “tabletop stand,” we used that in class, but I can’t remember how. I’ll have to research and re-learn that.

Slow Fiber Studios, in California, also has tools, mostly sold as a full kit, and at the moment, mostly sold out, but check back. They have the te-kumo hook, a miura hook and the shibori stand, and more.

I wrote a blog post about the shibori workshop at Ox-Bow, and other things I was doing that month, you can find that here.

That’s it! Just a short blog post to share with you that yes, the advanced tools are worth it.

I’m teaching a 6 week class in shibori now, and preparing my booklets for a weekend workshop I’m teaching in October on No Mordant Dyes, so I’m deep in research mode.

Now that I’ve compared the two styles of te-kumo dyes, I definitely want to make more, using the hook, and also invest in additional tools. If only they had these at the local Daiso store, or the Japanese grocery store/mall with food court.

I also have a lead on an affordable alternative to PVC pipes for arashi dyeing… I’ll update you if I can get my hands on them!