Seat of Our Pants

Part of our tour around Moni was a visit to an ikat weaving village. It was here that we learned how the pieces we purchased were made. Though most of the threads are now bought cheaply at the store, they illustrated for us how the cotton was spun and prepared in the past.

The cotton threads are first stung up and dyed the lightest color of the pattern. After they have dried, a pattern is woven into the threads using a sturdy thread made of palm leave (shown in the large photo above). The threads are then dyed a second time with a darker color. The part that is covered by the weave will not pick up the darker pigment.. If the pattern is multi-colored, a new pattern is sewn into the threads and the process is repeated.

Once with process is complete, they remove all the palm leaf weave. The string will have stuck together through the dying process so they must then be manually separated.

The loom is then attached to them while in a sitting position. They now begin the very labor intensive job of hand weaving. The time and effort it must have taken to make the pieces we bought is mind blowing.

But who knows? We might have been duped into buying something that a machine pumped out. I wouldn’t put it past us…

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