Pojagi

3 posts in one day - unheard of ! But then sometimes so many threads come together that you have to follow it up. I've worked quite a lot in the past with silk organzas, specifically printing on them using the computer and using them in layers but have been following a highly opaque route recently. When I wrote recently on 'skylines' , I had a comment from Neki about using the technique with sheers. Ooh I like that idea. And then I saw what Jude in her 'What if?' blog had been doing incorporating translucent fabrics in her work - lovely. I first saw 'Pojagi' items in the Korean Galleries at British Museum and the V&A and then the catalogue of a collaboration between Australian quilt artists and Chunghi Lee ( one of the reasons I joined Surface Design Association)
I later came across the book ' Rapt in Colour' which is full of examples to make you drool. What I really like about 'Pojagi' is the way the seams are like the lead in stained glass windows, important and integral to the design, and also the 'moire' effect you get when organzas are laid over each other.
I made this door curtain specifically for the doorway from the kitchen to the back stairs in our old flat. I scanned Eucalyptus leaves and printed them onto silk organza to get the idea of them drifting downwards. As I was printing on A4 sheets I had work out a way to join all the pieces - I settled on French seams as the best way to trap all those loose threads!I was originally going to trap real leaves between the layers but they proved too brittle and so made silk leaves instead.



As there are leaves printed on both sides , one of the bonuses when the curtain was in situ was it looked very different according to whether the light shone onto it and when it was backlit, in natural or electric light. Unfortunately we haven't yet found a location for it in our new property

After I'd done it I found instructions on how to sew the seams 'properly' on a Japanese Pojagi site (no English but the diagrams are clear). When I was in Japan, the books mentioned on the site were top of my shopping list and I bought a couple of kits (the fabrics are translucent ramie). I bought some light kimono fabric with Pojagi in mind - perhaps now is the time to think about transparency again.