How to draw IKAT

June 2020. Sigh. What an annus horribilis this has been and somehow our woes just keep getting compounded in the most heartbreaking ways.

I sincerely hope we can lighten our collective mental anguish to some degree with another week of relaxing tangles — together with fervent prayers for “peace, love and happiness“.

That’s exactly what German tangler Indrani Novello writes about her hope for her Ikat tangle.

Ikat is Indrani’s 11th tangle on the site and she describes how it came about:.

 To distract myself I have been doing various little art projects.

Today I am sending you a new pattern called “Ikat”, because it was inspired by the Indonesian woven fabric of that name.

I think it is simple, offers a few possibilities for variation, and it has a bit of a 70s vibe.

And right now I think we could all do with a bit of peace, love and happiness. 🙂

Amen to that.

According to Wikipedia,

Ikat (literally means tie and in the Malay language it means “to bind”) is a dyeing technique used to pattern textiles that employs resist dyeing on the yarns prior to dyeing and weaving the fabric.

In ikat the resist is formed by binding individual yarns or bundles of yarns with a tight wrapping applied in the desired pattern. The yarns are then dyed. The bindings may then be altered to create a new pattern and the yarns dyed again with another colour. This process may be repeated multiple times to produce elaborate, multicolored patterns.

When the dyeing is finished all the bindings are removed and the yarns are woven into cloth.

In other resist-dyeing techniques such as tie-dye and batik the resist is applied to the woven cloth, whereas in ikat the resist is applied to the yarns before they are woven into cloth.

Because the surface design is created in the yarns rather than on the finished cloth, in ikat both fabric faces are patterned.

…

As textiles do not last well through history, scholars have so far been unable to determine where the technique of ikat originated. Nevertheless, some parts of Asia demonstrate strong ikat traditions which suggest its possible origin; they are Maritime Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia. However, it probably developed in several different locations independently.

The term “ikat” has Indonesian origin, and it was introduced into European textile vocabulary back in the early 20th century, when Dutch scholars begin to study the rich textile traditions of the East Indies archipelago (today Indonesia).

The dot grid method of drawing a regular curved line makes Ikat so much fun to tangle. A thin aura inside the finished curves is then inked in and embellishments added. Ikat is easy and soothing to tangle so I join with Indrani in saying, “I hope you enjoy it.”

Indrani illustrates the step-by-step instructions for drawing Ikat below where she features it in a tile with the Zentangle®-originals Crescent Moon, Fescu and Pokeroot.

Image copyright the artist and used with permission, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. These images are for your personal offline reference only. Please feel free to refer to the images to recreate this tangle in your personal Zentangles and ZIAs. However the artist and TanglePatterns.com reserve all rights to the images and they must not be publicly pinned, altered, reproduced or republished. Thank you for respecting these rights. Click the image for an article explaining what copyright means in plain English. “Always let your conscience be your guide.” ~ Jiminy Cricket

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Check out the tag indranin for more of Indrani’s tangles on TanglePatterns.com.

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