Katazome – Stencil dyeing – Creating a Legacy through the things I Love

Katazome, is a Japanese method of dyeing fabrics using a resist paste applied through a stencil. With this kind of resist dyeing, a rice flour mixture is applied using a brush or spatula. Pigment, or dye, is then applied by hand-painting, immersion or both. Where the paste mixture covers and permeates the cloth, dye will not penetrate. One of the biggest attractions of katazome was that it provides and inexpensive way for an over-all pattern.
Traditional katazome is quite labour intensive.

Traditional Katazome Stencil cutting

Stencil:
In traditional Katazome, the stencil is made by bonding multiple layers of mulberry paper together and waterproofing with persimmon tannin, resulting in a strong, flexible brown colored paper. The intricate designs are then cut by hand with a knife. The resulting stencil is stabilized by overlaying with a fine net of silk.
This seemed way too complicated and time consuming. So, I decided to use an existing plastic stencil for my first trial. For additional stencils, I used my Cameo to cut custom designs.

Nori Paste applied through a plastic stencil.
Far left shows Elmer’s School Glue drawn on.

Paste Resist:
Traditional Katazome paste is made using a complicated process (John Marshall has a very good description at http://www.johnmarshall.to/H-Resist.htm). While checking on-line for easier methods of making the paste resist, I found that Amazon carries a type of glue called Nori Glue that is made from rice and is water soluble. I purchase some and found that it was an inexpensive, easy and satisfactory paste resist.
I also tried Elmer’s school glue. This works well as a resist for drawing but was not a good stencil resist.