5 Ideas for Sustainable Fashion: Ways to Upcycle with Shibori

Here are 5 inspirational ideas to inspire you to create and upcycle with shibori.

Some Useful Guidance to Upcycle With Shibori

I just love decorating clothing with stitched shibori. For me keeping the designs simple is key. An uncluttered and straightforward pattern is always pleasing. I am going to share two of my designs and 3 by some of the wonderful people who subscribe to my regular email and keep me posted on their adventures with shibori.

What works well is one strong central image or a repeat of a couple of motifs. A simple frieze can also be very effective when repurposing clothing with shibori. Furthermore, some of the pieces of clothing use my downloadable PDF patterns. Lets look at examples of ways to upcycle clothing with shibori.

1. An Ori-Nui Patterned Pale Green T-shirt

An example of subtle decoration. The stitching is quite simple but nonetheless effective. The design around the neck is ori-nui shibori with the stitching taken away from the fold to create the circles. The striking flower shapes also uses this technique with some ne-maki tied in beads in the centre.

This design was created by Isabel.

2. An Example of a Simple Repeated Motif: Blue Jersey T-Shirt Upcycled with Shibori

This top was sewn and dyed by Linda de Bodt. A great example of keeping it simple, employing a repeated flower motif, one slightly bigger than the other. Here is a blog describing how to create these flowers.

Additionally, the top illustrates a good example of how to use a simple frieze running around the bottom of the garment. Here is another blog showing how this design is made in shibori.

3. A Miru Patterned Pale Grey Upcycled Top

This is a simple design that I created. Originally a 3-year-old white T-shirt, having seen better days! In this case I used miru shibori, using the same type of stitching twice but it a slightly different manner. The larger miru circle runs off the edge with a large centre of grey. The shoulder decoration is a complete circle. T-shirt material is chunky when sewing through two layers therefore I used Perle no 8 to stitch with. Spacing between the rows on the large circle was 11mm/ ½”. In contrast the smaller circle rows were stitched 10 mm 5/16” apart.

4. An Effective Use of a Single Motif to Upcycle with Shibori

Sue Craig sent me this example of a dress she dyed incorporating a ginkgo leaf. One of the patterns that is available as a download pattern on my website. I love the simplicity of using just one shape. The result is most effective. That old adage “Less is More”

5. An Example of a Repeated Motif: Mirrored Either Side of a Jacket Front

This linen jacket is upcycled with a mirrored repeat motif of a shibori eucalyptus flower. This pattern is found in my website shop with step-by-step instructions.

Again, a good example of keeping your ideas simple, leaving a lot of space for the design to breathe. A good piece of advice is don’t overcomplicate your design. Specifically, don’t overcrowd the fabric with motifs.

To Sum Up

I hope that these five examples inspire you to upcycle clothing with shibori. Indeed, you will now be looking avidly in your local charity or goodwill stores for simple shapes in pale colours to make a work of shibori art with!