伸子張り ・ しんしばり ・ shinshibari | 伸子 ・ のぶこ ・ nobuko
A thin stick made from bamboo with a needle on each end. Cloth-stretcher. Also called shinshi or nobuku. Shinshi-bari are used to stretch cloth in order to dye, paint or dry.
Stretching plays an important part in the (manual) production process of kimono, either to create a flat surface for dyeing or decorating or to try to avoid/reduce shrinking of the material during drying. Different sizes of shinshi-bari exist depending on the purpose or size of the fabric. Tanmono (bolts of fabric) can use from 300 to 400 short sticks depending on the length, while a single panel, for (yuzen) decorating, uses two or more longer sticks to keep it taut.