Patterns in weaving - notes

One of the problems in weaving is that you are presented with a long length of cloth that has to be turned into a garment, and what has interested me in Japanese dress, is that there is no shaping in the kimonos, the lengths of material being sown together to make the garment, the 'squareness' is reflected in the sleeves. What I do notice from the styles of the Geisha girls, that several patterns are normally reflected in the overall dress style. More interestingly, a chequered pattern, that would relate directly backing to a simple weaving style is also evident. There are also the rich designs of the brocade material, and the applied embroidery work for the more complicated and sumptous material with the use of gold thread.
Putting pattern into cloth is complicated, earlier on I put photos of indigo dyed cotton on with the 'resist rice paste' to control the placing of the pattern. I notice that William Morris also tried this in his work on the chintzes he produced, here he calls it 'discharge-printing' . In which you dyed the whole bolt of cloth a similar colour, and the pattern is then made by using various strengths of bleaching re-agents. This can be seen on the Kennet chintz, where the extra colour of yellow has been added to the indigo dyed material.



Some old Japanese material patterns which show the brocades made on the Jacquard looms, and the more simple chequered patterns, it seems that the sewing of strips of patterns together was also used to make the kimonos....

Joined strips

A patchwork effect

Simple chequer board design