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A trip with the Chiang Mai Textile Group (Chiang Mai, Thailand) offers a visit with Raza, a hemp cloth weaver in the Hmong hill tribe village of Ban Pha Nok Kok. In her small, wooden workshop, Grandma Raza demonstrates the steps for preparing the fibers and weaving hemp fabric. |
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| She starts by showing us the tough stalks and demonstrates how she
splits them into strips. It's hard to photograph, because she is moving so quickly! The rough fibers are dried and the ends are joined together to make continuous strands for weaving. |
Then, she uses what looks like a spinning wheel to work and ply the hemp. She winds the strands onto handheld spools. And the hemp is boiled several times, which softens the fibers. | ||
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In the next step, the strands are rolled between wood and stone to further soften, smooth and polish the fibers. The wood represents female energy, the stone is male. However, men do not participate in the weaving process. If they do, Raza says that "they will find snakes in their traps". Translation... their luck will become very bad! So, weaving hemp is an exclusively female endeavor. Girls begin to learn the craft from their mothers at around 14 years of age. |
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Raza shows us how to splice the strands and prepare them for weaving. Then she demonstrates how to weave the cloth using a traditional backstrap loom.
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The wood
of her loom shuttle is worn beautifully smooth from many years of use. |
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| The finished hemp cloth is sometimes left it's natural color. Or it may be dyed or batiked with intricate traditional patterns and then dyed. Often with natural indigo. Indigo is one of my favorite dyes. It has been used since ancient times. And, some cultures see it as having magical or talismanic properties. | |||
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| Some other faces of the village... | |||
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Photos copyright Deb Swingholm
All rights reserved Visit other pages in Deb's Photo Gallery and visit Deb's Flowering Moon website to learn about Feng Shui, Space Clearing and other ways to bring more balance and beauty to life. Consultations, workshops, professional training available. Find out about "The Golden Triangle - Music and the Cycles of Life", a film project that chronicles daily life, music and spiritual traditions of tribal people in Thailand, Burma and Laos. And for tribal artifacts and textiles from this region visit Tribal Trappings |
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