“Karen and I both studied other mediums before textile design. It’s the perfect fit for us – it fulfils our dual needs for creativity and practicality.”
Pepa Martin
What is shibori? Karen: Shibori is a traditional Japanese art form of resist-dyeing. It’s been part of Japanese culture for thousands of years and respected for its beauty, intricacies and diverse techniques. The process involves compressing and exposing areas of cloth to create patterns with indigo dye: these patterns can be precisely planned and geometric or more textural and whimsical.
We met, the Japanese philosophy of appreciating the beauty in the ‘imperfect’. After being shown the shibori technique in class, we saw infinite possibilities that we could experiment with to create new things that intrigued us both.
