Traditional Japanese Nui shibori uses a variety of means to compress cloth before it is dyed including stitching, binding, folding, pleating, etc. The stitched shibori was the inspiration for woven shibori. In traditional stitched or mokume shibori parallel rows of running stitches are sewn by hand with a needle into a piece of finished cloth. When the stitches are completed they're used to gather the cloth tightly. Then the cloth is dyed. The folds in the cloth resist the dye to varying degrees, resembling mokume or wood grain. This technique allows for greater control of the pattern and greater variety of pattern, but it is much more time consuming.

Woven shibori makes it possible to place the "stitches" into the cloth while it is being woven on the loom. Those "stitches" are actually supplemental warp or weft threads that may be structured as a twill, a lace or other pattern. The supplemental threads are used to gather the cloth.   

Subsequent dyeing results in an image of the woven pattern that is visually softer and less rigid than the original structured cloth.

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