Kasuri
Kasuri is a cloth woven by yarn-dyed threads to produce designs. It may sound easy to do, but actually, it requires high techniques and time to make as the yarns should be dyed back-calculated from the designs on the completed cloth and the cloth should be woven as designed.The dyed yarns are called “kasuri ito”, and further classified as “tate kasuri” (warp kasuri), “yoko karusi” (weft kasuri) or “tateyoko kasuri” (warp and weft kasuri) according to the direction/directions in which the yarn is used.
Kasuri ito is dyed after the yarn is partly twined with other threads to leave such parts undyed.For dyeing the yarn, most of the producers follow the method to twine the yarn with anti-dyeing threads, but there is another way of doing this by weaving in anti-dyeing threads by a weaving machine. This method allows delicate dying that hands cannot do, and for example, the elavorate designs of Oshima Tsumugi are produced by the yarns from this method.A hand woven Kasuri is a treasure that requires several months of work of a highly skilled craftman.At present, the techniques are preserved as ones of the traditional craftworks, while for the products for the general public, the production processes have been widely mechanized to achieve affordable costs.