On my most recent trip to Japan I visited my favourite vintage textiles shop near Hida Folk Village in Takayama.

The elder lady that runs the shop is a delight. She speaks little English but way more than my Japanese but we somehow always manage to work things out!

This time she had a big box of these wonderful indigo dyed Katazome fabrics.

Katazome is dyeing using a rice paste resist with finely cut paper stencils (cutting these, Katagami, is a whole craft in itself…..).

The rice paste takes hours to steam and has to dry completely after being applied through the stencil to create the pattern.

What is amazing is that the paste is applied through the stencil to be perfectly matched down a whole bolt of fabric before it gets dyed in Japanese indigo.

This is a technically demanding and highly skilled job.

These pieces are a bit special as the fabric has been pasted on both sides resulting in a very clear white of the original fabric and is, of course, twice the work of pieces pasted on just one side.

There are six different pieces:

1. Large Chrysanthemums with leaves (dark indigo)

2. Five petal flowers with arabesques (grey blue indigo)

3. Leaves with arabesques (dark grey blue indigo)

4. Shippo tsunami seven treasures and dot pattern motifs in diamond lines (mid blue indigo)

5. Fans and flowers in leaf hexagon border (soft blue indigo) - two pieces joined

6. Diamonds in lozenge patterns (mid blue indigo) - longer piece