Overview
Wearable Art
Very few places in the world offer the mastery of organically dyed cotton combined with artistic hand weaving to give you a uniquely beautiful garment. My Thailand village does.
Here are the natural dyes and hand loomed fabrics of my native village in northeast Thailand.
The responsibility for textiles rests with women who prepare the yarn, dye it, and finally do the weaving. Each item takes days to make and retains the fragrance of the natural dye, indigo (from the plant shown here), which takes years of preparation. Four months after planting indigo seeds the leaves start turning dark green. That indicates a good quality. A paste is then extracted from the leaves. Each weaver is self sufficient in her own dyes and has her secrets as she turns the paste into a blue dye. It is quite popular among many dyers to feed her dye pot with a few drops of rice whiskey as they have believed from generation to generation that there is an “unseen goddess spirit” watching the dye pot.
In my very poor village a women’s collective keeps busy in between rice harvests making the fabrics that I sell. Some of my profits go back to the village for community projects, and I have acted as the banker when money was needed for a new shed. I, Bua Pratoomrat, will continue in that role.
