TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles

More books for Lao children

2012-01-29T15:52:00.000-08:00

Our third "book party" was held in Ban Namkhor, Laos on Jan. 4, 2012. Thanks to the enthusiastic young staff at Big Brother Mouse, who make these school-based events possible, TAMMACHAT donated 260 books to children at the local school.

For each textile piece we sell, we donate a new book to a child in Laos in partnership with Big Brother Mouse, a Lao-owned project that promotes literacy in the Lao language. This now makes 750 books that we've donated in late 2011 and 2012 to help children in rural Laos learn that reading is fun and rewarding; we have 2 more book parties in the works, thanks to our customers' support.

You can sponsor a book party yourself or the publication of a new book. It's a great way to honour someone, celebrate your birthday or just because.

I love the photos of the kids with their very first books -- fun ones too that help them experience the joy of reading!

For more photos of Big Brother Mouse book parties, see our posts from:

Jan. 4, 2012 (book parties held Oct. 26 and Dec. 6, 2011)
March 15, 2011 (our photo essay of our 2011 time with Big Brother Mouse in Laos)

Ellen

Flood relief: helping women in Thailand

2012-01-13T05:45:00.000-08:00

The effects of the worst floods in 50 years continue to be felt throughout Thailand. More than 700 people lost their lives. Hundreds of factories closed; some still are. Prices are higher across the board.

In response to this crisis, we decided in October 2011 to donate 10% of all TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles’ show revenues in November to Thai flood relief.

Flooded worker (photo: HomeNet Thailand)

While the producer groups with whom we work are not in the central areas most severely impacted by the months of floods, our close watch of events made us aware of the millions who were.

When we arrived in Thailand in December, we contacted HomeNet Thailand to see if our donation could help them in their work. On previous trips we had visited their office in the north of Bangkok (one of the areas hit by the floods) to meet with the Director, Poonsap Tulaphan, who has also been involved for decades with one of the weaving co-operatives with whom we work.

HomeNet (aka: Foundation for Labour and Employment Promotion) helps women in the informal sector, including home-based workers, temporary labourers, part-time workers and others who are easy prey to the unscrupulous power of the marketplace. In this era of corporations that contract out production and rationalize supply chains for just-in-time deliveries, workers like those that HomeNet supports bear the impact of these so-called “economic efficiencies.”

HomeNet works with about 200 groups in Thailand whose members total more than 7,000. These workers not only suffer the pressure and insecurity that result from payment by the piece; they must also supply their own workplaces and equipment.

We learned that HomeNet is currently working with more than 20 groups on the outskirts of Bangkok whose 400+ members were directly affected by the recent floods. Many of these are handicraft producers, but also include groups whose members do piece-work sewing and sweets-making. The floods not only displaced their families; they also damaged their equipment and supplies.

As a result, HomeNet is providing these groups more than 1 million baht (approx. $33,000 CAD) for microcredit loans to replace equipment damaged or destroyed in the floods. TAMMACHAT’s donation went into this fund to provide loans to women that are essential to restart their work --- without resorting to usurious moneylenders. When members are again producing, they will repay their loans to the group so that other members can also re-capitalize their home-based businesses.

Our contribution is a small step towards helping those facing huge losses. Thanks to TAMMACHAT’s customers for their support.

Alleson and Ellen

Fair trade fibre art and art quilt samplers

2012-01-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

While we usually trade with weaving groups directly, we occasionally buy from other organizations that share our values and vision. Sop Moei Arts, with showrooms in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, is a case in point.

Sop Moei Arts is a self-supporting, non-profit organization that grew out of a public health project founded in 1977 and funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). In its first decade, the project focused on maternal and children’s health of Pwo Karen villagers in the remote Sop Moei district of Mae Hong Son province in northern Thailand. During this time there were no other health facilities in the area. Indeed there were no roads and the only access available was by boat, elephant or a trek on foot.

More than 30 years later, the project has grown to provide a fair income for hundreds of Pwo Karen villagers while preserving women’s traditional textile weaving and men’s basketry skills. We've known of this project for years, but have only recently discovered sampler packs of their fabrics to share with art quilters and other fibre artists in our part of the world.

Handwoven textile samplers from Sop Moei Arts

While the Pwo Karen weavers do not use natural dyes, their strong patterns -- re-interpretations of Pwo Karen traditional fabrics -- are perfect for incorporating into art quilts or fibre art projects of all kinds. The packs of six or seven small squares, measuring 5" x 5", combined with three larger squares of 6 3/4" offer palettes in oranges, reds, blues, greens or tans.

These will be available, along with other samplers of hand-reeled, naturally dyed, organic silks, at our booth in the Merchant Mall at Quilt Canada 2012 from May 29 - June 2, 2012 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Check our website for details.

PSST: Those interested in children's books and education might find interesting this video that documents a bilingual education program for Pwo Karen in Thailand.

Ellen and Alleson

Is TAMMACHAT a charity?

2012-01-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

We’re often asked if TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles is a charity. And if not, why not? Our answer is that we are a social enterprise: a venture that uses market-based strategies to achieve a social purpose, whose bottom line is to benefit people and the planet rather than to maximize profit.

The artisan groups that create our products are also social enterprises. They provide more than income to their participants. Many were formed in the era of empowering women through self‑help groups. They often provide environmental awareness through training in natural dyes and composting methods, numeracy skills and micro-credit, consciousness raising and Tleadership opportunities.

A village-based Eri silk rearing and weaving group in Central Thailand

From the beginning, the weaving groups with whom we partner have told us that to continue their work they need to expand their sales, especially into markets they otherwise could not access. They want trade, not aid. Our chance meeting with the first artisan group led us to understand their achievements and barriers, which in turn prompted us to create a fair trade business to help them achieve their goals.

A "train-the-trainer" workshop with Prae Pan Group in NE Thailand

By paying fair prices, shouldering the cost (and risk) of credit and applying our skill sets to their marketing problems, we are empowering women to sustain their families, communities and environments. Just as important to us, is the fact that we are assisting women to continue their beautiful weaving traditions. We view our work as a passion project; our passion drives us on, in spite of the challenging economic realities that we, too, face in the marketplace.

A weaver at the Houey Hong Vocational Training Centre in Laos

At the same time, we recognize the value of charitable giving – both to mitigate disasters and to give those in need a hand up. Understandably, we make donations to organizations that share our values and inspire our generosity. These include:

Books for kids in Laos:
We support the work of Big Brother Mouse, a vibrant book publishing venture in Laos that brings highly illustrated books to children to make literacy fun. For each textile we sell, we donate a book to a child in Laos through this project. More about Big Brother Mouse in our blog post of Jan. 4, 2012.

Flood relief to help women in Thailand:
Following this year’s devastating floods in Thailand (the worst in 50 years), we decided to donate 10% of our sales from our November 2011 shows to help women affected by the floods. This donation went to Homenet Thailand (now known as Foundation for Labour and Employment Promotion), which supports home-based women workers and others in the informal sector. (More on this in a coming blog post.)

Alice Housing silent auction and other fundraising events:
We regularly donate a handwoven textile to the annual fundraising event to support abused women and children in Alice Housing, a transition house in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We also support various other organizations in our community with similar donations.

Assisting displaced peoples from Burma:
Many displaced peoples – whose villages have been destroyed by the Burmese Army – suffer from inadequate housing during the cold weather months. This year we realized that we could use our checked luggage allowance to address this need. With help from neighbours and friends in Nova Scotia, we gathered donations of blankets and warm clothing. These went in early December to those in need, including many children, through a relief organization, the Displaced Persons Response Network, we met that works in the borderlands of Burma and Thailand.

We continue to be introduced to additional organizations that do charitable work here. Even though Thailand is a “newly industrialized country,” needs persist here in many sectors. It seems that each organization we meet is involved with an income generation project to help people, particularly women, earn money for their families. We’ll be meeting soon with several of these groups to see if we can work together. One of the many barriers is an understanding of which products sell in different markets (especially niche markets). At the very least, we will share with them our experiences of building markets in Canada, the US and the UK for handcrafted textiles.

Ellen and Alleson

TAMMACHAT customers buy books for Lao kids

2012-01-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

For every textile piece we sell, we donate a brand new book to a child in Laos. But these aren't just any books. They're published by a vibrant and growing book publishing project called Big Brother Mouse, based in Luang Prabang, Laos. Entirely Lao owned, this project began when a visiting American retired book publisher noticed the lack of books in Laos. He sought out and teamed up with some bright and dedicated young Lao college students and continues to act as volunteer advisor to this day as part of the Big Brother Mouse team.

Because it's our customers who make these donations possible, we're eager to share the following email that we've received from Big Brother Mouse:

"We recently held a book party, and set up a book swap (what we call a mini-library), using the donation you made to Big Brother Mouse, on Wednesday, 26 October 2011 in Ban Nangiu. Here are a few pictures from that day. At the end of the party all the kids got a free book of their own, nearly always the first book they've ever owned. Then we left more books with the school, so they can trade their book for a different one after they've read it. We left a total of 288 books.

"It was an exciting day for all of the children, and we expect many of them will always remember it -- both because they had fun, and for the magic of opening a fun book for the first time, and discovering the new world that opens up. Thank you for making this possible!"

TAMMACHAT's second book party this season was held Dec. 6th in Ban Kok Ngiu. In this smaller village school, a total of 202 books were donated.

We've seen for ourselves the bright and enthusiastic Lao men and women who animate the activities at these rural book parties. For the children present, it may be not only the first time they've discovered that books can be fun, but also shows a wider range of possible jobs that they themselves might hold one day.

For more on Big Brother Mouse's work, visit their website. Take some time and poke around. You can also sponsor your own book party (in honour of someone's birthday, to commemorate an event or just because it's a great thing to do to promote literacy in a developing country) or sponsor the publishing of a new book.

Read our blog entry from last year's amazing (and mountainous) cycling trip of Big Brother Mouse supporters and staff. And enjoy these photos from our first 2 book parties where the joys of reading are introduced, along with books to each child in a village school. Three more TAMMACHAT-sponsored book parties will be held in the coming months.

We thank all our TAMMACHAT customers for making this possible!

Ellen and Alleson

Supporting Palaung backstrap weavers

2011-12-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

Palaung women in traditional dress

Our December wouldn’t be complete without a day at the Doi Kham Fair in Chiang Mai. At this annual exhibition of the King’s Royal Projects in northern Thailand, we were fortunate this year to meet a group of Palaung weavers. The Palaung (also spelled “Palong’ or, as they call themselves, “Ta’ang”) are the most recent displaced peoples to settle in Thailand from Burma.

In Burma, where they are one of the oldest indigenous peoples, they live primarily in northern Shan State in an area long recognized for tea production. A new report released by Ta’ang Students and Youth Organization estimates that 63% of farming families have lost their land to confiscation by the Burmese military and their cronies, primarily for massive hydroelectric and pipeline development projects. Read more on the Palaung Women's Organization website.

Cotton scarf, naturally dyed

The Palaung women we met live close to the Thai-Burmese border, about 3 hours by bus from Chiang Mai. Their traditional dress, which they were wearing, centres around red fabric but the handwoven scarves we bought from them are naturally dyed. All were woven with thick, cotton yarns on backstrap looms.

The older women we met belong to a 42-women strong weaving group, while the younger women from whom we also bought belong to another group in a nearby village. As with all the women's weaving groups with whom we work, weaving brings important additional income to these communities.

To learn more about the Palaung people, visit Indigenous Peoples of the World. For more information on backstrap weaving, visit Backstrap Basics. And see our post about another backstrap weaving group from last year's Doi Kham Fair.

Cotton scarf, naturally dyed

Cross stitch textiles reduce women's poverty

2011-12-22T18:16:00.000-08:00

At the Asia Pacific Feminist Forum, I wasted no time finding the women's craft area. The struggle against the exploitation of migrant labour – domestic and industrial – was a major topic and the products available in the craft area were examples of positive income alternatives.

My eyes went immediately to the needlework of a women’s group from Phayao in northern Thailand. Baan Tho Fan Maetam Group is a social enterprise formed to help earn additional for village women and to provide scholarships to village children who are otherwise easy prey for sexual exploitation.

The group is comprised of an embroidery team of 59 hill tribe women. Mien (i.e., Yao) women are widely known as expert cross stitchers; the beautiful works on display were fine examples. The Maetam Group also includes a sewing team of 7 women who add these decorations onto sturdy cotton bags and pouches.

TAMMACHAT will be selling these wonderfully crafted, fair trade items in the Spring and Summer of 2012, when this group will celebrate their 16th anniversary of providing alternatives to poverty and exploitation.

Alleson

New photo book showcases Lao weaving

2011-12-20T22:02:00.001-08:00

Lao weavers are renowned for their skills in creating exceptional silks. TAMMACHAT's 5th photo book on weaving in Southeast Asia, Mulberries ORGANIC SILK, is now available. It features the work of World Fair Trade Organization member Lao Sericulture Company, a non-profit that sustains rural weavers in Laos and sells under its brand, Mulberries.

Preview the book for free in TAMMACHAT's bookstore on blurb.com, then order a copy in softcover or hardcover (with paper dust jacket or with image wrap). Also available in iBook format for quick download (for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) -- only $4.99.

Other TAMMACHAT photo books available (photos by Ellen Agger, text by Alleson Kase):

Panmai: Handweaving in Thailand (featuring a women's weaving co-op, specializing in hand-reeled, organic silk and known for their natural dyeing skills)
Prae Pan Group: Handweaving in Thailand (featuring a women's weaving co-op that is known for its earth tones in cotton)
Weaving Sustainable Communities: Organic Cotton Along the Mekong
SILK (a collection of images showing the entire process of creating beautiful silks in Thailand and Laos)

Asia Pacific Feminist Forum brings activists together

2011-12-14T19:19:00.001-08:00

We arrive in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand with a splash! We fall into the inaugural Asia Pacific Feminist Forum of the Asia Pacific Forum for Women, Law & Development with 120 delegates from 20 countries.

Having written ahead to volunteer, we’re greeted warmly. Ellen’s tasked with tweeting from workshops; I mingle at coffee-breaks gleaning participants’ reactions and suggestions.

The women from Burma are beyond impressive. “We cannot speak of human rights in Myanmar so we speak of human dignity,” one says. This resonates deeply with an Indian women who shares her experience working at the grassroots where people deemed “untouchable” feel excluded from the legal world of “rights,” but understandably long for “dignity.”

Like the other women, we’re thrilled to see light shining in the eyes of the young Cambodian women and sobered by the thoughtful comments of an activist from Fiji who shares her exhaustion. “Four coups are too much for anyone.”

Easing into Asia? Guess not!

Follow APWLD on Twitter: @apwld. To see Feminist Forum tweets: #apff.

Alleson


Feminists from across the Asia Pacific region enjoy one another

Fair trade underwear & swimwear

2011-12-14T18:52:00.001-08:00

If you work for low wages in a garment factory in Thailand and your union president is unjustly fired, what do you do? After years of struggle, a group of unjustly fired garment factory workers in Thailand formed their own cooperative, Try Arm, offering no exploitation, sweatshop-free, fair trade fashion.

I had the good fortune to hear Jitra Cotchadet, the former union president at Triumph, a German-owned factory employing 3,000 workers. She spoke at the first Asia Pacific Feminist Forum, Dec. 12-13, 2011 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

From the Try Arm website:
"The TRY ARM brand originated in the protest camp occupied by Triumph International Thailand Labor Union workers engaged in a months-long struggle against their unlawful dismissal by their employer. After more than 20 years of laboring under exploitative garment factory conditions while serving as a beacon for social movements throughout Thailand, TITLU workers have responded to their employer’s final act of union busting by applying their longstanding commitment to democracy and economic justice to the production process itself.

"Combining extensive manufacturing experience with an unwavering social conscience, Triumph’s former union employees have now begun to produce TRY ARM undergarments and swimwear according to principles of sweat-free labor and workers’ self-management. We hope that you enjoy these high quality products in which each TRY ARM cooperative member has an equal, vital stake."

Learn more about Try Arm at http://tryarm-eng.blogspot.com/.

Modelling Try-Arm underwear at the Feminist Fashion Show, Asia Pacific Feminist Forum, Chiang Mai, Thailand, Dec. 12-14, 2011

Holiday gifts that give thrice!

2011-11-25T10:50:00.001-08:00

Until midnight EST, Nov. 30, 2011.. Pick up gifts for the holidays that save you money while you support rural women artisans in Thailand and Laos. Get 40% off your order at checkout (Coupon Code GIFT-TAM-40) when you buy online from TAMMACHAT's Ethical Ocean shop. (Canada and the US only)

Choose from organic silk scarves, cotton scarves, green gift bags and more. All dyed with natural dyes, sustainably produced and fairly traded.

FREE SHIPPING for orders over $75; $15 flat rate for other orders.

The fine print: This coupon can be used only once per household until midnight EST on Nov. 30, 2011. For larger orders, the coupon will be capped at a $100 maximum. Please be assured that the weavers have already been paid a fair price for their work, set by them.

For every piece you buy, we will gift a child in Laos their 1st book from Big Brother Mouse, a vibrant young Lao publishing company.

Feel free to share this discount code with your friends and all lovers of handwoven textiles and fair trade!

Interested in supporting Thai weavers during this difficult time with Thai floods? Here's a win-win for you and the weavers.

2011-10-25T13:14:00.000-07:00

Until midnight, OCT. 31...Early holiday gift shopping! You get50% off your order at checkout (Coupon Code TAMMACHATNA-EO) when you buy online from TAMMACHAT's Ethical Ocean shop.Choose from organic silk scarves, cotton scarves, green gift bags, & more. All dyed with natural dyes, sustainably produced and fairly traded. For every piece you buy, we will gift a child in Laos their 1st book from Big Brother Mouse, a vibrant young Lao publishing company. One discount code use per customer, to a max. value of $300 ($150 discounted price).

A win-win for you and the weavers.

President and committee member of Prae Pan Group,
a women's weaving co-op in NE Thailand

Cotton weaver, member of Prae Pan Group


Trainee at Houey Hong Vocational Training Centre for Women in Laos

Guest blog at StyleSubstanceSoul

2011-10-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

Dyeing "that perfect shade of green" with local leaves

I'm happy to share the story of one of our visits with Prae Pan Group in an article entitled "The Women Who Weave" as a guest blogger at StyleSubstanceSoul. Prae Pan is the first group we began working with way back when -- a women's weaving co-operative that's now more than 20 years old.

Organic silks come alive

2011-06-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

It's one thing to see a scarf hanging in a store. But TAMMACHAT's fairly traded organic silk scarves really come alive when you see them on real women -- just like you.

Thanks to my friends, Terrie and Carmel, for the fun photo shoot on the waterfront in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. You look gorgeous!

Photo Essay: Big Brother Mouse Brings Fun & Educational Books to Kids in Laos

2011-03-15T22:38:00.000-07:00

Imagine you're a child in a small village in Laos and your school loses its only teacher, so you don't go to school anymore. Imagine you have only ever read a textbook or seen writing on a blackboard. Imagine you've never owned a book so you don't know that you'll find more story if you turn the page. Now imagine...know... that this can change.

Big Brother Mouse, a young Lao-owned and Lao-staffed publishing venture, is now making creative books available in Laos, one of Southeast Asia's poorest and least developed countries. It publishes books in the Lao language (the language of schooling, but not the language of families in thousands of Lao villages). It also publishes bilingual books to help young people who want to learn English.

Young readers gobbling up their new books.

Big Brother Mouse is fostering a love of reading by making fun and educational books -- filled with fantastic drawings, paintings and photographs -- available to young readers of all ages. And now it's publishing more and more educational books for older readers too: books on women's health, taking care of your baby, inventions of the world, to name a few.

Because rural families can't afford to buy books for their children, Big Brother Mouse gives its books to kids for free. Printing and distribution are made possible by donors, including individuals, businesses and foundations.

TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles is happy to be one of these. For every textile you buy, we give a child in Laos their very first book, published by Big Brother Mouse. This is especially important to us because it gives girls -- who can't attend monastery schools in the larger towns in Laos -- a leg up on their education.

In February, we had the chance to travel with a 10-person book party team from Big Brother Mouse from Luang Prabang to Phonsavan, along with 9 donors/supporters/volunteers from Canada, Australia and the US. It was a cycling trip too -- we shared 7 bikes among 17 people, swapping off as we cycled up, up, up, down, down, down through spectacular mountainous countryside along one of northeast Laos's better roads.

This photo essay gives a glimpse into our week with Big Brother Mouse. Fun? You bet! And we were very happy to help get more books into kids' hands.

The views were spectacular but the roads to small villages are few.

Noh, book designer, encourages volunteer and author Jane as they ride on a rough, dusty road.

Much more than just a cycling tour, this trip was a chance for Big Brother Mouse to hold book parties in schools along the way and to hold spontaneous "read alouds" in small villages en route.

Touy, driver and book party staff, tells a story from one of the books with great animation at a "read aloud" in a small village on the main road.

Showing the pictures, telling the story...each child was given her or his own book after this reading.

Sypai (writer and book party leader), Vanneled (writer) and Kongsy (photographer) were also researching and photographing any and every thing that tells the story of life in this part of Laos for future books. Villagers gathering and preparing grasses to make brooms. A blacksmith fashioning tools from scrap metal. Rice fields grown up around bomb craters, a legacy of America's bombing of Laos in the '60s and '70s. Weavers creating silk yarns coloured with natural dyes and weaving them into stunning silk scarves.

A woman preparing wild grasses to sell for broom making.

We learn more about weaving at Lao Sericulture's farm.

We had sponsored and attended 2 book parties in the past, and this year, we donated 794 books to schools in Luang Prabang province through 4 book parties, thanks to sales of TAMMACHAT's textiles in 2011.

Learn more at http://www.bigbrothermouse.com/. Donate directly, sponsor a book party yourself or the printing of a new book. Buy handwoven textiles from TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles. All are ways you can support this important work.

A few of the many young Big Brother Mouse staff ham it up along the route. Four Big Brother Mouse book party teams visit 2 schools a day in rural Laos, bringing books to kids.


This is the first village in Xieng Khuang province where we stopped to hold a book party.

The village school sits up the hill from the river.


A teacher reads aloud from the book about the frog -- he's never full!


Children respond to a book reading, designed to engage young minds and show that reading can be fun.

A boy listens to a story with rapt attention.

Video: Sypai sings the Big Brother Mouse song that kids learn at the book parties -- all about the fun of reading!

Games are part of the fun at Big Brother Mouse book parties.

Listen, do, laugh. Games engage young minds and bodies. Just ask Daoheung, book party staff.

At the end of the book party, every child receives a book of her or his very own!

These girls are engrossed in their very first book, given to them by Big Brother Mouse, thanks to supporters like TAMMACHAT and many others from around the world.

" I can read!" And what a fun story!

"What happens next?"

Peek inside our weaving books!

2011-03-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

Come along with us on a virtual tour of Isaan weaving villages in Northeast Thailand! We created 3 PHOTO BOOKS that showcase some of the Thai silk and cotton weaving groups with whom we work. Each book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the making of extraordinary handwoven textiles. From creating the natural fibres to natural dyeing to readying the loom, these books tell stories that bring these textiles and the women who create them to life.

You can look inside our books for FREE. If you want to buy a copy for your craft library, they are available either from our website (hardcover only) or from TAMMACHAT's Blurb Bookstore (hardcover and softcover).

With these books, you will go on a virtual tour of Isaan with TAMMACHAT to visit:

members of the silk weaving group Panmai
members of the silk and cotton weaving group Prae Pan
organic cotton farmers, natural dyers and weavers who live along the Mekong River, and are weaving sustainable communities

We're proud that each group featured uses the books themselves to illustrate their traditional practices to their own customers. We also use them extensively at our own eco-textile events to demonstrate weaving and dyeing techniques, and to introduce some of the artisans. Enjoy!

Hmong Story Cloths Handstitched in Laos

2011-02-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

While TAMMACHAT focuses on supporting rural weavers in Thailand and Laos, we couldn't resist the Hmong story cloths (called "Paj Ntaub Tib Neeg" in Hmong) on display in Luang Prabang, Laos. These colourful cloths showcase the traditional embroidery skills of Hmong women, often seen stitching in villages and markets, especially in northern Laos. The cloths we purchased depict life in Hmong villages and surrounding forests. Others tell stories of war and hardship.

We bought these story cloths from Ms Boonsong, a woman we met who comes from a small village about 60 km from Luang Prabang. The embroidery is particularly detailed and beautiful. Each carefully stitched piece, about 10" square, takes about 5 days to complete. They can be incorporated into larger quilt pieces or enjoyed as they are.

For a fascinating and lengthy discussion of Hmong stitchery, we recommend Geraldine Craig's recent investigation of Hmong textiles entitled, "Patterns of change: transitions in Hmong textile language" which was published in the Jan. 2010 edition of The Hmong Studies Journal. Ms Craig discusses the transition in Hmong needlework from abstract and symbolic geometric patterning to a "new pictorial embroidered textile language." Her paper concludes with a compelling list of references. The paper is freely available online.

The Cycles of Nature: When Black is Brown

2011-02-17T08:21:00.000-08:00

Whenever we visit our weaving partners in Thailand and Laos, we’re struck by the cyclical nature of this work. There is a season for everything. Dye in rainy season and cool season. Weave in cool season. Rest in hot season. Begin again. And throughout, grow rice. Plant. Tend. Harvest.

For us too, there is a season. We spend 4 months here each year during weaving season. We make orders, choose textiles already woven, visit the dyers and weavers in their town shops and, sometimes, in their villages.

For the weavers, their constant is growing rice, the crop and food that underpins life in this part of the world. Our constant is learning – about the lives of these women, their techniques, their skills, their capacities, their interests in working together. And, always, we learn more about the effects of natural and its cycles.

An example: This year Panmai Group in Northeast Thailand told us that it’s a bumper year for ebony in their region. The fruits of this tall tree yield browns that, when dyed again and again, produce a deep, rich espresso black. Delighted with the news, we immediately placed an order with Panmai for a dozen ebony black scarves. In the process we learned that, unlike other colours, they dye only finished scarves with ebony as the dye makes the fine silk threads too sticky to handle in skeins.

We also ordered black scarves from Lao Sericulture Co., which works with hundreds of families in Northeast Laos. Their black is achieved using other dye materials available in their area. But black – in any region – is difficult to produce with natural dyes. It depends on both the skills of the dyer and, more unpredictably, the weather.

This year, when we saw our first samples in Laos, the “black” scarves were definitely brown – and a pale brown, at that. Tactfully, they offered to re-dye the organic silk yarns. We gratefully accepted their offer and hoped for a deeper, chocolate brown next time. Today, the second samples arrived: the colours are beautiful – one style a lovely chocolate brown and the other a deep espresso brown – so we eagerly await the completion of the order. Yes, these “blacks” are browns, but they’re beautiful and this is what nature offers us right now.

This is handwork that shows the hand of the maker. It also shows the hand of nature, yielding colours that can only be achieved by knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation, coupled with experimentation and trainings in methods that will improve colour fastness and colour depth, even new colours. There will always be variation.

What’s important to us at TAMMACHAT is that, whatever the result of our order, each piece is unique. Each respects nature. Each supports rural women. What could be better?

New from TAMMACHAT: Sweatshop-free Clothing

2011-01-27T04:29:00.000-08:00

For years we’ve been looking for a tailoring group in Thailand – one that could make clothing with the handwoven cotton and silk cloth that we buy from weaving groups in Northern and Northeast Thailand. At the end of last year’s trip, at a special juried craft fair, we met Kumpor, whose name means “sufficiency.” We loved their unique, “fusion” designs, so we bought a few pieces and found these sold quickly in Canada at our Fair Trade Textile events.

It came as no surprise that we found this group in Chiang Mai. This large and vibrant northern Thai city is home to many highly skilled tailors, dressmakers and small factories that sew the many garments produced in the area. But we wanted to find a group that shares TAMMACHAT’s values of offering fair wages and benefits to the sewers, as well as protecting the environment. This worker-owned co-op fit the bill!

So, this year we looked for their retail outlet. There we were able to make arrangements to visit Kumpor’s headquarters and workshop. Once we had the address, we had no trouble finding it, as it’s based in the community where Alleson first lived in Thailand 20 years ago.

Our visit to their headquarters allowed us to learn about the group as well as see their designs. Unlike the other groups with whom TAMMACHAT works, Kumpor colours its cloth with low impact chemical dyes from Germany and the UK that are certified “environmentally friendly.” This year, they received “Green Product” certification from the Thai Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, one that’s available only to small textile producers that use environmentally responsible processes.

Kumpor co-operative includes:

6-7 pattern-makers and sewers who work at the community workshop
28 home-based sewers who work with Homenet Thailand's support and oversight
a group of 26 dyers and 18 handweavers, living in a community about 2 hours away, where they produce the cloth Kumpor uses for its garments. They are in the process of adding local farmers to the group to grow heritage varieties of cotton. This will allow Kumpor to add new designs that will feature handspun, handwoven, indigo-dyed fabric.

Most of the indigo cloth we have found comes from Sakhon Nakhon in Northeast Thailand. Interestingly, the indigo Kumpor will use for its handspun cotton clothing grows wild in the north of Chiang Mai province. Karen people (one of the “hilltribe” groups in the North) gather it and make dried dye cakes that the co-op will buy and send to the dyeing/weaving group.

This year our visit resulted in an order for cotton blouses and jackets in 3 distinctively different styles and 3 appealing colour ranges, using designs and cloth produced by co-op members. These will be available in spring 2011 when we return to Canada.

We look forward to working with Kumpor on future projects. We hope you look forward to seeing their unique line of sweatshop-free clothing.

Spinning Understanding -- More about Silk

2011-01-24T18:37:00.000-08:00

Hand-reeling silk in NE Thailand

Occasionally people ask us whether silkworms are killed to produce silk. Our answer is “no, but…”

Killing the worm, which is actually a caterpillar, would defeat the purpose. Caterpillars spin the cocoons that provide the filaments which comprise silk thread. But cocoons contain pupae and, when cocoons are boiled to loosen the gum that holds the filaments together, the pupae are cooked much the same as an egg is boiled. And, just as a boiled egg will never become a chicken, a boiled pupa will never become a moth.

Also like a boiled egg, a boiled pupa is an excellent source of nutrition. So much so that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) promotes the nutrition available from silk pupae, especially in the rice-growing regions in Southeast Asia where the rural poor are frequently deficient in proteins and other nutrients whether or not they have enough carbohydrates.

Silkworm pupae are full of protein. They also contain essential amino acids, potassium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, phosphorus, selenium and other trace elements as well as vitamins A, E, B1, B2 and carotene -- all of which are vital to the human body.

The 1st Eri silk group we worked with

TAMMACHAT buys its silk from rural weaving groups in Thailand and Laos where women often raise silk caterpillars in their homes. These are Bombyx mori, sometimes called mulberry silkworms. During village visits, we’ve seen the boiled pupae relished as a traditional food.

At TAMMACHAT, we put great importance on respecting the cultures in which we work. This often means leaving our judgments at home and, instead, trying to better understand the people who create the beautiful weavings we sell. So, when we were offered fried pupae, Ellen diplomatically tasted one. Later, I was delighted to see an FAO information booth at a fair in Vientiane, Laos, promoting the nutritional value of silk pupae and other insects.

Fried pupae with sticky rice & fish

In India, there is another tradition of making silk from the remnants of cocoons made by Samia ricini, the Eri silkworm. Unlike Bombyx mori, the cocoons made by Eri caterpillars are not comprised of a continuous filament, so they are spun into a yarn rather than reeled as thread. Because of this difference, spinners can allow pupae to develop into moths that leave their cocoons. When the Eri silkworm was introduced into Thailand, however, women boiled the pupae anyway and added it to their families’ diets, maintaining tradition while providing nutrition.

With this knowledge, I continue to wear silk just as I continue to eat eggs. In either case I ask: Were the beings that provided these things for me treated cruelly? Was the environment destroyed or depleted in the process? And most importantly, did the people who laboured to provide me these natural goods endure unhealthy or unjust conditions, or were they treated with respect and appropriately paid?

Handwoven vegan silk scarf coloured with ebony fruit

We ask these same questions at TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles where our goal is to sustain cultures, communities and the environment rather than market what is sometimes called “peace silk,” “vegetarian silk,” “no-kill silk” or “cruelty-free silk.” We buy handwoven, heritage-quality silks coloured with traditional natural dyes. Our ethical fashion accessories and fabrics do not come from sweatshops or any other factory. Most of it is organic mulberry silk. We have found only one producer in Thailand who allows the Eri moth to develop and leave the cocoons naturally, so his work is available in very limited editions. If you’d like to see these or our mulberry silks and learn more about how they’re made, we invite you to visit www.tammachat.com.

More blog posts about Eri silk:

Alleson

TAMMACHAT featured in A Distinctive Style Magazine

2011-01-15T17:09:00.000-08:00

TAMMACHAT's fair trade eco-textiles featured in the Winter 2011 edition of A Distinctive Style Magazine: Weaving Beautiful Cloth: Fair trade organic silk in Northeast Thailand. Text and photos by Ellen Agger. Check out all the inspiring stories.

How to get around Thailand

2011-01-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

We've received several requests for contact information for the driver and interpreter we employ to visit rural weaving groups in Thailand. Our answer is always “Sorry, no can do.” Here are 6 reasons why.

1. Buses and songthaews

Bus service in Thailand is extremely good. Buses are fast, cheap and go almost everywhere. But navigating one’s way through the thousands of available buses can be challenging. Reading place names in Thai script is the first hurdle. Alleson can read a bit of Thai and speaks more than that. She also understands how place names are organized and how to interpret addresses.

Even more confusing are the various types of buses and the number of bus stations in a given place. In a big city, there are often 3 bus stations – air-con, 2nd class and intra-provincial. But there are always exceptions: for example, our recent trip from Chiang Mai to Udon Thani -- It’s a 12-hour overnight journey so we chose to spend a bit more for tickets on a VIP bus with 24 seats rather than the usual 40+. However, while our friend was waiting to pick us up at the air-con bus station, we arrived at the 2nd class station. Alleson’s Thai got us a clarification of where we were and my essential cell phone allowed me to tell our friend where to find us.

BTW, a songthaew is a type of pickup truck with a full canopy and 2 bench seats that often has a designated route for intra-provincial travel.

2. Trains

We like train travel in Thailand. It's slower and more expensive than bus travel but it’s relaxing and less claustrophobic, especially for long trips. But it’s not as enjoyable or safe as it used to be. The older cars haven’t been kept up and most of the reserved seating fan cars are being replaced by hermetically sealed air-con ones that are more expensive and less romantic. More the issue, though, is they don’t reach most of the places we need to go.

3. Cars and Trucks

Sometimes we join our friend Pii Yai, rural development worker extraordinaire, in her bucket of a truck. Piled in the back are her sleeping bag, pop-up mosquito net and other basic tools for daily living as she spends most of her time visiting projects throughout NE Thailand. There’s also stuff she's gotten from one project to share with others; such as water-filters, fuel efficient stoves, plant cuttings, etc. We're grateful to her and her 15 year-old Mazda that keeps on trucking and we’re always happy to pay to fill her tank with bio-diesel.

4. Motorcycles

When bicycle travel waned here, scooters and small motorbikes (100-125 cc) became the standard for personal local transportation. We rent them when available, i.e., when we're in places where lots of other foreigners go. However, monster trucks and SUVs now crowd the road (and put their owners deep in debt) so riding on 2 wheels seems increasingly dangerous. Like most places, drinking and driving is a huge problem.

Nonetheless, put Alleson on a motorbike and she’s all smiles. When she lived here, she toured to every changwat (province) over the course of 8 years, putting 50,000 km. on her 250cc imported Honda. We use motorbikes just for daytrips, though.

I’ve learned to drive a scooter. I'm too much of a bicycle rider to get the hang of the different set-up for the brakes on the geared motorbikes! I can drive myself, but not the 2 of us, so I'm usually sitting behind Alleson, often carrying bags, baskets and other large objects in the typical Asian way!

5. Air travel

This year we flew directly to Chiang Mai after arriving in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, to avoid travelling into the city only to leave again the next day. It was a good decision but in general we prefer to keep our carbon footprint low by taking ground transportation. It also saves us a lot of money.

6. Walking

Of course, our most common form of transportation is walking. Like our other means of travel, it allows us to meet Thais face to face without the isolation of a private car or the insulation of an interpreter. Walking across town or riding a songthaew to an outlying village provides opportunities for chance meetings and serendipitous discoveries that enrich our experience and broaden our understanding.

In short, we’re not keeping our driver and translator to ourselves; rather, we ourselves are our drivers and interpreters.

Photo essay: Cotton Weaving in Northern Thailand

2011-01-10T17:11:00.000-08:00

Junhom Bantan is a Northern Thai weaving group that specializes in eco-friendly, natural dyes and handweaving. They weave with handspun cotton, as well as stronger, unbleached cotton yarns. TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles has been working with this group since 2007, building a fair trade relationship. On Christmas Day, 2011, we began a 2-day visit to the small villages where group members live and work. These cultural traditions are still alive and well, thanks to the efforts of Mai, the woman who acts as the group's manager,and whose mother started the group many years ago. A keen interest in natural fibres and natural dyes in Japan, as well as other countries, continues to provide a market for their eco-textiles.

[Photos and text copyright Ellen Agger 2011. Please ask for permission to use them.]

Mai, who manages Junhom Bantan now, stands in front of the small village shop with her mother who started the village natural dyeing/weaving group many years ago. Most customers, like TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles, now visit the village to make special orders.


A sampling of cotton threads show some of the natural colours available from leaves, barks and insect resin. This group specializes in earth tones in interesting combinations.

Juhom Bantan's breezy cotton scarf in shades of blue is available from TAMMACHAT's online shop.


The dyeing area, in the shade for comfort and protection for the dyers, houses dye materials, a chopping machine for dye materials, yarns, dye pots that simmer over fires, 2 spin dryers to wring out the dyed yarn, and a drying area out of the sun.


Mai's paa (father) and sister do most of the group's dyeing now.

The fruit of the ebony plant creates a rich, dark brown.


This machine chops bark into small pieces so it can be used multiple times to create dyes. The chips are later composted.

Unbleached cotton yarns steep in a dye bath, soaking up a tan colour from bark of a local tree.

Unbleached cotton is lightly dyed and hung to dry.

The blue dye is created from hom, a leaf in the same family as the more famous indigo plant. It has been collected in the wild in Northern Thailand, made into cakes and used in Ban Tan to dye cotton yarns a medium and dark blue.

A typical floor loom in Northern Thailand. This one is set up with a trigger shuttle and a "rocking" seat. It's under the house, easily accessed when the weaver has some time to weave.

Women weave when they have time. Some use it as a main source of income when they are not growing and harvesting rice, their staple crop. Others use it to supplement their income. Some tell us they simply love to weave.

This 83-year-old woman is one of the weaving group's original members.

This is the second year that this group has received the Green Products certification from the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, given to small textile producers.

Alleson and Mai enjoy getting to know each other in Ban Tan. Mai told us she values being friends with her customers. We share this value and also feel it's important that the weavers enjoy their work. This is "slow fashion" -- creating cloth that takes time, patience, care and love.

TAMMACHAT's eco-textiles go to Ottawa

2011-01-10T07:18:00.000-08:00

Organic silk scarf

Ottawa region people: TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles wants to bring our handwoven, eco-friendly, fair trade scarves, bags, clothing & more to Canada's capital in April/May 2011.

Can you help? We're looking for...

PEOPLE: local champions to help us spread the word about fair trade/eco-textiles/eco-fashion, tap into their networks for promotion, reach the local and national media, or who'd like to host a home party for their friends and colleagues.

SPACE: a light-filled, accessible space to rent for a show or 2 or 3, or an organization/business/gallery that might like to host a fair trade, eco-textile show.

ASSOCIATIONS/ORGANIZATIONS: interested in hosting a slideshow/talk plus sale.

Please let us know if you can help: ask(at)tammachat.com. Learn more about TAMMACHAT, fair trade and the artisans at www.tammachat.com.

Weaving naturally dyed cotton in Northern Thailand

Cotton weaving in Northern Thailand - Ban Tan visit

2011-01-05T02:04:00.000-08:00

You can now see a set of photos that I took in Ban Tan on Dec. 25 and 26, 2010 while visiting Junhom Bantan, a cotton weaving group in Northern Thailand. Alleson will post later to this blog with highlights and impressions from this visit. For now, I'll just say that building our fair trade relationship with this group has been a delight! We're impressed with their commitment to using natural dyes, protecting their environment and creating "green products."

We look forward to sharing this group's cotton handweaving with you upon our return to Canada in Spring 2011. We'll have traditional Thai fishermen's wrap pants, cotton scarves in various weights and -- new for this group -- a beautiful undyed silk/cotton scarf made from a mix of Eri silk (handspun silk) and unbleached cotton. Alleson has been wearing this scarf in the last week and loves its soft, yet nubbly texture.

If you're on Facebook, we invite you to visit (and like!) our TAMMACHAT Facebook page. If you're not on FB, you can still see our public Ban Tan photo album.

When the weaver becomes part of the loom

2010-12-19T16:14:00.000-08:00

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

Proud Karen weaver with her work

Today we attended the Royal Project Fair that celebrates the King of Thailand’s support for sustainable agriculture as well as the hilltribe peoples’ cultures and self-sufficiency. There we found some beautiful phaa ngung gee e-ow. The best news is that it was being sold by the Karen weaver herself with assistance from 2 bilingual (Karen/Thai) young women.

We bought 2 of these pieces in red, constructed in a traditional way with 3 long, narrow pieces sewn together. Each strip was 15” wide and almost 2 yards long. Each finished piece makes a stunning textile that traditionally is wrapped around the hips or simply tailored into a tunic top. These beautiful cotton weavings can also be used as to create contemporary fashions or home décor: wall hangings, table coverings, cushion covers and other upholstery uses.

I’m not fond of going to language classes but I love talking with people at markets – especially with tribal peoples whose mother tongue is not the one we’re speaking – especially when we’re talking about weaving or food.

My “Word of the Day” was gee e-ow. The young woman who taught me gee e-ow apologized that she didn’t know the English translation. So I taught it to her. “Backstrap,” I said pointing to my lower back while saying the Thai word for that body part. Then I fell into another vocabulary void, so I mimed a strap going around my hips.

One of the pieces we bought

While I may not have known the word, I did know that Karen (aka Kariang) women are renowned for their skill at backstrap weaving. The Karen people are often described as a nomadic “hilltribe” people who have migrated from China. This is literally true but many Karen settled in valleys north of Chiang Mai long before it was part of the nation state called Thailand.

While backstrap looms have largely been replaced by stationary floor looms, some traditional cultures still create beautiful textiles with this deceptively simple technology in which the weaver becomes part of the loom.

The huipiles of Guatemala are perhaps the most widely recognized example of backstrap weaving. However, every year the women who excel at this art number fewer as these traditional cultural practices are lost.

Discussing good sizes for handwoven shawls

Today everyone was excited with our purchases, which also included several unbleached cotton scarves with a lovely texture. We told them about our business in Canada and they invited us to visit their village weaving group to learn more and, perhaps, to make a special order. This type of exchange often marks the beginning of a longer, fair trade relationship that is based on mutual benefit, learning and respect.

Until next time,
Alleson

Indigenous Peoples Textile Art

2010-12-15T00:56:00.000-08:00

We've met some fascinating and very supportive artists through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Bonnie Samuel, a textile artist, is one of these. Check her recent blog post about TAMMACHAT's work in Laos.

You can also follow Bonnie on Facebook, visit her website and check Bonnie's new online shop on Meylah.com.

Reconnecting With Mother Earth

2010-12-13T00:40:00.000-08:00

We founded TAMMACHAT to help preserve the traditional art and knowledge of rural farmers in Southeast Asia. Reconnecting With Mother Earth, an article published on Dec. 13 in the Bangkok Post, introduces you to one of the grandmothers at the heart of this preservation.

A weaver in Ban Pa Ao, Ubon Ratchathani province, with her annual rice harvest piled behind her.

Featured in Hand/Eye Magazine

2010-12-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles' fairtrade work with Laotian weavers is featured in Hand/Eye Magazine -- "Threads of Beauty: Changing Laotian Women Weavers' Lives One Thread at a Time" by Pamela Ravasio.

Hand/Eye Magazine is a fantastic online magazine that "explores the nexus between design and development, culture and commerce, art and craft, and environment and ethics." Check it out.

The Cycle of Life & Our Upcoming Trip

2010-10-22T17:21:00.001-07:00

We leave for Thailand and Laos on Nov. 29. It's our busiest season here with holiday shopping coming up soon and we're proud to announce our new website with an expanded online shop.

Life would be a bit easier if we had an 18-month cycle, because 8 months at home is too short. Too short for selling the textiles acquired on the previous trip (2.500 pieces last year!); too short for all the things that make up the richness of our lives -- from our organic vegetable garden to reading, friends and keeping connected here in Canada.

But the cycle for weaving is an annual one. Most of the weavers are farmers (they farm the staple food, rice, and many other crops), so they are busy preparing the fields, planting, growing and harvesting during much of the year. Only when the annual one crop has been harvested -- as most of them can't afford irrigation for a second crop -- do they have time to weave.

Weaving season coincides with our Canadian winter (cool season there, in the 3-season climate that includes cool, hot and rainy season). It begins in December, continuing into hot season. It's difficult to weave silk in sticky, rainy season, so we need to coordinate our visits, orders and buying with the times that work best for the weavers.

Dye materials -- natural ones like leaves, barks, berries, flowers, insect resin and so on -- also vary with the season. Some are only available a short time each year; other materials can be collected, dried or made into dyes for use later.

It's all a cycle that we respect and work with -- and one we learn more and more about during each trip. The artisans are our teachers.

We leave on Nov. 29 and will be travelling throughout Northeast Thailand (known as Isaan), Northern Thailand and Laos for 4 months. We look forward to the trip and to continuing our fair trade relationships with the women artisans with whom we work and from whom we have learned so much. We talk alot about eco-fashion, ethical shopping and conscious consumerism when we're here in Canada. We talk about food, daily life, natural colours, weaving inspirations and lots more when we're there.

It's all part of the larger cycle of life.

10 Qualities of Slow Cloth by Elaine Marie Lipson

2010-06-09T06:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Elaine Lipson, we share her thoughts on "slow cloth," a term she began using in 2008. These nicely sum up the qualities expressed in the textiles that are produced by the rural artisans in Thailand and Laos with whom TAMMACHAT works. Visit Elaine's blog on Art, Craft, Culture, Sustainability and Slow Cloth for more of her writings. Learn more about these artisans on this blog and on our website.

10 QUALITIES OF SLOW CLOTH (read the full, original piece)

Joy
Slow Cloth has the possibility of joy in the process. In other words, the journey matters as much as the destination.

Contemplation
Slow Cloth offers the quality of meditation or contemplation in the process.

Skill
Slow Cloth involves skill and has the possibility of mastery.

Diversity
Slow Cloth acknowledges the rich diversity and multicultural history of textile art.

Teaching
Slow Cloth honors its teachers and lineage even in its most contemporary expressions.

Materials
Slow Cloth is thoughtful in its use of materials and respects their source.

Quality
Slow Cloth artists, designers, crafters and artisans want to make things that last and are well-made.

Beauty
It's in the eye of the beholder, yes, but it's in our nature to reach for beauty and create it where we can.

Community
Slow Cloth supports community by sharing knowledge and respecting relationships.

Expression
Slow Cloth is expressive of individuals and/or cultures. The human creative force is reflected and evident in the work.

Fair Trade in Laos

2010-06-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

Check out this YouTube video about Kommaly Chantavong's work with rural weavers and silk farmers in Laos. Her fair trade company, Lao Sericulture Co., is one of TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles' trading partners.

Fair Trade Communities in Laos produced by Moral FairGround

Bonnie Samuel Designs Blog Features TAMMACHAT

2010-05-28T09:37:00.001-07:00

I'd like to thank Bonnie Samuel, an artist with a passion for connecting fibre, art, culture and life, for giving me the opportunity to expand on the article I wrote for SAQA Journal (Studio Art Quilters). I posted the article on this blog on April 29, 2010.

You can read Bonnie's questions and my replies on her thoughtful blog in her May 28, 2010 posting.

Ellen

Weaving Beautiful Cloth -- Fair trade organic silk in Thailand’s Northeast

2010-05-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

[First posted online on DaisyGreen Magazine in spring 2010.]

Text and photos by Ellen Agger
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As we drive into Nawn Thoong village in Thailand’s northeast province of Khon Kaen, Pii Yai is excited. She has served for many years on the board of directors of Prae Pan Group, a women’s weaving co-operative in Thailand’s northeast, whose staff set up our visits today to three villages where members live and work.

We gather across the street at the house of Mae Pit, a long-time Prae Pan member. She and the four other members sit on a mat next to the house, protected from the glaring sun. They’re in their late 50s. These are the silk weavers in the village. Like most of Prae Pan’s members, they are farmers who fit weaving around their farming chores and care for their children, grandchildren and elders. Weaving brings in much needed additional income, used to send their children to trade school or university, for health care and to improve their lives in the village.

By belonging to the co-op they are paid for their work as soon as they deliver it to the group’s shop in Khon Kaen city. Members are proud that the co-op owns this shop, reflecting the group’s goal of being self-sufficient.

Co-op membership gives members the chance to work with customers like TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles which pays 50% in advance for orders. “On our annual visits with groups like Prae Pan, we deepen our relationships,” says TAMMACHAT co-founder Alleson Kase. “This year we are learning more about the group’s capacity to weave organic, naturally dyed silk fabric for the growing eco-textile market. We have also started to collaborate on designing bags for the North American market.”

Co-op membership has also given members a market for their weaving well beyond what they would otherwise be able to reach as individuals. They are keen to learn more about the markets in our country, as they don’t often have the chance to meet directly with foreign customers of the co-op.

We ask the women gathered today if they are passing on their skills, learned from their mothers. Now their daughters are going off to earn their livings in the cities or on to further schooling. These skills are at risk of being lost, we’re told again and again on visits like these.

Sometimes younger women do return to their village when their children are small, preferring a quieter life where they have family support networks. “When I was young,” says one of the women, “I went away to work in a factory. Then I came back to my village. At home, you’re free. I can farm and I’m happier.”

After choosing samples of silk yarns of some of the colours they can produce in this village, we thank the women, jump in Pii Yai’s truck and arrive a short time later in Nom Thoom village. We stop at the house of Mae Nung who is feeding organic mulberry leaves to heritage silkworms in baskets her husband has woven. She sits behind blue netting that protects the sensitive silkworms from exposure to diseases and chemicals like cigarette smoke. “Raising silkworms is like raising babies,” she says. The resulting silk yarns, painstakingly reeled by hand, are produced organically, we learn, protecting both the women’s health and their local environment.

We meet with 10 women, ranging in age from mid-forties to over 70. For all the women, this work brings income to the family. For some, it’s more. “If I don’t weave,” says Mae Som, age 49, “I cannot sleep.” Mae Tong Luan tells us, “It’s important to me that I do the whole cycle of production. It’s a circle.”

In neighbouring Suk Som Boon village, Mae Nung practices this full circle. She grows the mulberry bushes to feed the silkworms, hand reels and twists silk yarns, dyes them with natural dyes that she has grown or gathered in the wild, and weaves. It’s time consuming work. It takes 2 months to produce 12 handwoven, naturally dyed silk scarves, 3 months to produce 40 metres of organic silk fabric.

We watch as Mae Pan cuts the reddish green leaves of “maak yao.” She has a new recipe to create a luminescent green. She dips the silk yarns in the simmering dye bath twice, then gets help from Mae Pet, the president of Prae Pan, to straighten the fine yarns and then they hang them to dry.

Preserving these traditional skills – and bringing income to women in Thailand and Laos’s rural areas – is what’s behind TAMMACHAT’s work. “Fair trade is about much more than paying fairly for the work,” says Alleson. “It’s about respecting the people who do the work, learning from each other and supporting sustainable practices. It makes a real difference in the lives of these women,” she adds.

“Our weavers are very proud when they can weave cloth beautiful enough to attract customers,” Mae Pet tells us. And well they should be.

For more info, visit TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles and Prae Pan Group.

Weaving Women Together

2010-04-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

This article was published in the Spring 2010 issue of the SAQA Journal, a publication of Studio Art Quilt Associates. We're happy to support the beautiful work of art quilters through our membership, donations, writing and photography.

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By Alleson Kase
 Photos by Ellen Agger

There’s nothing quite like the sensuous surface of hand-reeled silk. Its slubs add depth. Its sheen adds warmth. When it’s handwoven, you can see the hand of the maker in the silk, says Jamie Pratt, a quilt artist from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Add to this the subtle golden colour from coconut husks or the sky blue from the flowers of the butterfly pea and you have extraordinary fabrics – art in themselves.

When you take this fabric and transform it into a new piece of art – an art quilt – you can see the hands of many makers in the finished piece. And the making of the new form of art has a richness that goes far beyond each of those makers – a fusion of traditions and contemporary creativity, a way to weave women together.

I have admired women’s weavings since my first visit to Guatemala 30 years ago. In the intervening decades I’ve learned that handwoven cloth is an important source of income for many rural women in the developing world; a vital part of what sustains them, their families and their communities, while sustaining their cultural heritage.

Several years ago, my friend Ellen and I visited PraePan, a women’s weaving co-op in Khon Kaen, Thailand. PraePan’s members, like other women in Northeast Thailand and much of Laos, weave in their homes on foot-treadle floor looms made from hardwood and bamboo. Without metal heddles, the warp yarns are usually raised with patterning strings and/or bamboo strips. The weft yarns are thrown by hand in a slender "boat" shuttle, carved from local hardwood, stained dark and worn smooth by years of use.

Before warps are strung or bobbins filled, women spend months preparing the yarns. Many raise silkworms, boil cocoons and reel silk threads. Some spin their own cotton, after removing the seeds and fluffing the boll into a cloud of fiber. Almost all dye their own yarns, using natural materials they have grown or gathered close to their homes.

The women distill a wonderful array of nature’s colors from leaves, husks, wood chips, barks, berries, fruits and flowers. Slate blues, peony pinks, herbal greens, and spicy browns: all their colors seem to have a third dimension not captured on a color chart and rarely duplicated.

Many tie-dye the yarns before weaving with a traditional technique that they call "mudmee," and which we in the West usually refer to as ikat. [Described in a travelogue by Karen Maru in SAQA Journal, Spring 2008] When the mudmee yarns are woven, an elaborate geometric pattern emerges and repeats. If the artist is especially expert, as well as diligent, the pattern can continue for 20 meters!

During a village visit, we saw that their artistry is matched by their practicality. They have adopted fuel efficient stoves for their dye pots, and abandoned heavy metal mordants that pollute village streams. Membership in the co-op gives women access to trainings and appropriate technologies from local rural development groups. These let them improve their products and decrease their costs, while they protect their health and the health of their communities.

Members sell their weaving to the group, receiving payment when pieces are finished rather than when they’re sold to a customer. During our first visit, however, we learned that PraePan had been forced to decline recent requests for new membership because their members were already creating more products than the co-op was selling. On the spot, we decided to buy a portion of the group’s inventory to bring home to Nova Scotia, Canada.

Weaving international links

We realized that a one-time purchase was not going to address PraePan’s marketing problem, so the next year we returned to discuss possible strategies that might lead to a long-term increase in sales. Our first suggestion was to connect them to the Internet, as well as develop a website and shopping cart for them. In dialogue with PraePan staff, we came to understand how impractical this was: the women do not read or write English, so they could not respond to email enquiries that a website would generate.

More crucial is the fact that there are more than 70 million web sites and millions of online shopping carts. Customers must be driven to web sites; given the competitive nature of online marketing, they must also be convinced that artistry, fair trade and environmental stewardship override other concerns of price, availability, and selection. This task is a formidable one that would leave weavers no time to weave, even if they had the skill and resources to take it on.

Consequently, we formed a social enterprise to market their artwork. We call it TAMMACHAT, which is Thai for "natural." Each year we travel to Thailand and Laos to visit PraePan and other similar groups of village weavers who we meet through their networks. We support these artisans and their communities by choosing quality pieces that are produced with environmentally and socially sustainable practices, by paying fair prices set by the artisan groups themselves, and by returning to the same groups each year with the intent of increasing their income stability through long-term trading relationships.

Some of our customers care about these factors as much as we do; others only need to see the unique beauty of the textiles to appreciate them. Either way, the makers and their methods of production are supported and encouraged. Fiber artists of all sorts seem the most appreciative of our message and these products. Who would better understand the intricate ways that fibers weave us all together?

Un-natural fibers

Silk, cotton and bamboo are all "natural fibers" but they are seldom produced naturally. Most silk is produced in factories that rely on heavy doses of toxic sanitizers and, consequently, are unhealthy workplaces. [See footnote 1 at end of this blog post.] Most cotton is grown with large inputs of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, and unsustainable quantities of irrigation, so much so that an entire sea has been drained dry to produce "affordable" cotton clothing. ["Disappearance of the Aral Sea," Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, May 01, 2006.] Bamboo, the latest green-washed fiber, grows quickly and naturally in the wild but is an extruded yarn produced by an industrial chemical process with toxic effluents like most other rayon.

The weaving groups we work with create silk fabrics that are 100% organic: the silk they weave is raised and reeled in villages; the mulberry leaves fed to the silkworms are free from pesticides; their remarkably dynamic colors are created with natural dyes that are wild crafted or organically raised.

These weavers live in areas too dry to support cotton production without irrigation, which they don’t have. This means that, while they do their own dyeing, they usually purchase their cotton yarns. On the other hand, we spent two weeks last year with a group that grows heritage varieties of cotton on the banks of the Mekong River without toxic chemicals or unsustainable irrigation. Together we designed two indigo cotton jackets and a line of decorative pillows. This year we will return there, as well as look for more organic cotton production on the Lao side of the Mekong.

Joint projects

Because quilting is not a traditional style of handwork in this part of Thailand, we initially had some trouble explaining to Thai weavers how their silks might be used by fiber artists in the West. Knowing that a "picture is worth a thousand words," we went online with the technology of a cell phone and a laptop computer to introduce staff members of another weaving co-op, PanMai, to the artwork of Laurie Swim and Valerie Hearder – women we know in Nova Scotia who are also internationally known quilt artists, authors, and instructors.

With that shared understanding, and the weavers’ help and artistic advice, we have produced a unique line of silk squares in four different palettes -- each package containing one mudmee design and four solid colors. We’d gotten the initial idea from Val Hearder, who suggested that we might want to bring silk squares to the bi‑annual Quilt Canada conference. Three months later, we did just that and found that Val was right.

During our next visit, we will discuss with these groups the growing demand in the West for ethically-sourced clothing and share the good news that their extraordinary silk scarves and fabrics are now eco-fashionable.

We hope that increased public awareness of the impacts that textile production has on people and the planet will prompt people to embrace these "slow fashions" as they have "slow food." We hope that groups like PraePan and Panmai can hang on a little longer while the world catches up to their traditional ways, so that they can better sustain what they have learned from their grandmothers and are now preserving for their granddaughters.

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Alleson Kase and Ellen Agger live most of the year in Nova Scotia, Canada. Together they have created TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles, a social enterprise that imports handwoven silks and cottons from Thailand and Laos. They market these at fair trade textile events that they create, as well as online at www.tammachat.com. 
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Footnote:
1. Chlorine, formalin, lime and anti-fungus drugs are used to reduce disease among intensively raised hybrid silkworms. Many women find that they are allergic, or worse, to these chemicals. Symptoms include headaches, eye pain, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, fainting, dyspnoea, coughing, numbness, skin rashes, itching and eye swelling. From “Gender and Natural Resource Management: Livelihoods, Mobility and Interventions.”

#13: Organic Silk in Laos

2010-04-24T15:50:00.000-07:00

[This is our last post from our 2009-2010 trip.]

Laos — a small, landlocked, mountainous country wedged between China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma — was once home to some of the best weavers in the world, masters of discontinuous supplementary weft, as detailed and ornate as European tapestry.

However, during the "Vietnam" war, American B52s rained cluster bombs over Laos — more bombs per capita than in any other conflict until the 2003 bombing of Baghdad. Lao people were forced to flee their homes and their villages, often taking refuge in caves for years while the war raged on. Understandably, much was lost, materially and culturally.

At the close of the war in 1975, life expectancy, literacy and per capita GNP in Laos were ranked some of the lowest in the world. In the last 20 years, with much international assistance, Laos has slowly climbed to 133 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index of 182 countries.

In an effort to support women and rural communities in these changes, we ride 11 long and crowded hours on a 2nd class bus through the mountains of Central Laos.

When we arrive tired but safely in Xieng Khuang, we are warmly greeted by Kommaly Chanthavong, visionary and founder of Lao Sericulture Company. Two years ago we purchased some beautiful scarves made by them. This year we have made a special order, rather than purchase stock on hand at their shop in Vientiane, so we’ve come to see for ourselves where and how it will be made.

"We work for our producers," Kommaly tells us early in our 3-day visit. As the visit unfolds, the importance of this simple statement becomes clear. This fair trade enterprise works with hundreds of families in this and neighbouring provinces.

Sǔan Món – Mulberry Farm – becomes our home base. It’s a demonstration organic farm and a centre for research and training. It’s also home to a large but low-tech sericulture facility where silkworms are raised, new varieties are bred and silk yarns created. The farm also includes a weaving and dyeing centre, where most of Lao Sericulture’s natural dyeing takes place.

Acres of mulberry bushes, heavily but carefully pruned, now fill fields where once only sugar cane grew. Mulberry leaves are the natural diet of silkworms, which only eat them fresh. We walk through the fields, nibbling not leaves but fresh mulberries, which are also used to make a range of purple dyes. Lao Sericulture is also developing mulberry wine as a new product. Not surprisingly, Lao Sericulture silk scarves are marketed under the brand name Mulberries.

Lao Sericulture has a long-term lease on the land from the local government. In fact, the government invited Kommaly here to work with local village groups to reduce poverty by providing training and markets for sericulture, natural dyeing and weaving. When villagers come to the farm for training, they are taught the entire cycle of silk creation as it is practiced organically and sustainably by Lao Sericulture.

The scope of the operation impresses us both. We begin our visit with the cows, whose manure is a main component of the rich compost that feeds the mulberry plants. "This is where it all starts," Kommaly tells us as she explains that many of the villagers receive a cow, as well as training, and later return a calf to the farm so that the practice can be sustained.

Kommaly goes on to tell us that 21 people will have their hands in the production of each of the silk scarves we’ve ordered. It’s easy to believe, as we visit a herd of cows, a large composting operation, and fields and fields of mulberry bushes: all of which are cared for by people rather than machines. We also go into the silk rearing houses where 4 different kinds of silkworms are carefully raised – without chemicals. During our visit they sit empty, however, as winters on the plateau of Xieng Khuang, although pleasantly cool for us Canadians, are too chilly for Bombyx mori – the cultivated silkworm – which prefer a consistent, warm temperature around 28˚.

In one workshop, we watch the reeling and finishing of silk yarns. In another, we see dye pots filled with mulberry fruits, indigo, stick lac insect resin, leaves of all sorts, even mud. All of them simmer away on custom-made, fuel-efficient stoves that burn coarse sawdust from a nearby mill that processes hardwood timber.

At the end of the first day, we visit the workshop where skilled weavers realize captivating designs based on traditional patterns as well as the images and colours that occur to Kommaly as she gazes at her favourite view. "My studio," she says, as she sweeps her hand towards the expanse of fields rising to distant mountains.

This is impressive and important work, especially on the scale in which it’s undertaken, but what strikes us most is what we see the next day when we travel to 2 of the villages that are also part of the Lao Sericulture network. Villages like these are where the scarves we’ve ordered will begin life, as they’ll be woven with traditional Lao silk raised in small village households. Unlike the weaving groups in Thailand with whom we work, these households most often participate in only 1 step of the process – in this case, the production of silk yarns.

We drive 2 hours – more than half of the time on an unusually narrow and badly fissured, unpaved road. Before it was built a few years ago, Kommaly and her husband walked 5 to 6 hours along a dirt path to visit these villagers. While travel is much easier now, it’s still true that silk is an ideal cash crop for remote villagers, as it has a high value relative to its weight or volume. It can also be stored, waiting for transportation or customers, without spoiling.

As well as providing income within this village, Lao Sericulture has helped the villagers build sand and rock water filters and better toilets. Together these projects have greatly improved health in the village. But despite the new road and activities like those of Lao Sericulture, we see deep poverty throughout the area. Most people in Laos are subsistence farmers but here we see bomb craters in what are now fields. We also see green onions and mint planted in bomb casings that recall the haunting exhibit we saw in Vientiane at the office of COPE (the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise.) Obviously, it’s a long road to recovery when you’ve been bombed back to the Stone Age, as some have said of Laos.

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A week later we pick up our order at Mulberries’ shop in Vientiane. The traditional Lao silk gives the scarves a nubbly texture similar to the feel of linen but richer – a bit like the way lanolin makes wool so different from cotton. The colours we’ve chosen for the 2 designs in this year’s collection are gorgeous: pearled blue, eggplant, ruby red, sapphire, thatch, leaf green. We’re fascinated that each group with whom we work produces such a different palette, based on the plants that grow well in their region, and their own traditions and skills in creating natural dyes.

Lao Sericulture is proud of its work and its recognition as a fair trade enterprise by the World Fair Trade Organization. Kommaly has received international awards for her designs and she was one of the 1000 peacewomen nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. But we sense that most important to her is the reward of helping reduce poverty in northeast Laos while reviving traditional skills that were almost lost. We’re pleased to play a small part in that recovery, and proud to bring these artisanal and sustainable fashions to the West.

Ellen & Alleson

Slow Fashion: An Opportunity to Celebrate

2010-04-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

We're thrilled to post this article about the philosophy of Slow Fashion and its connection to the Slow Food movement by guest blogger Pam Johnston. Pam is a recent graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, with a bachelor of fine arts (major in textiles and minor in fashion). She is an active member of the Clothing and Textile Action Group at Nova Scotia's Ecology Action Centre. Photos by TAMMACHAT's co-founder, Ellen Agger. [Citations at the end of this article.]

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Introduction

The summer of 2005 was a turning point in my life. During a trip to Vietnam I saw something beautiful that was missing from my experience of Canadian urban and suburban culture.

Each morning, before 5 a.m. farmers from surrounding regions brought fresh produce to the city center of Ha Noi to be sold at markets. Each day locals went to the market to select goods for their day’s meals. The market was filled with herbs, flowers, vegetables, fruits, eggs, meats, and fish I had never seen before. And the people used everything well.

For example, every part of banana trees was used. Banana fruit was eaten, banana leaves were used to wrap steamed sticky rice, and banana tree trunks were sliced thinly and used as garnish for hot dishes. The foods there were fresh, local, traditional and unique to their country—and the flavour was out of this world!

Market vendor in neighbouring Thailand

It was after returning to Nova Scotia from Vietnam that I experienced a fresh hunger to know what types of produce and traditional recipes were unique to Nova Scotia. I wanted to know who grew and prepared the food I was consuming, and to feel as connected to the place I lived as the people in Vietnam appeared to be.

My trip to Vietnam and many subsequent trips to the farmer’s market have taught me that getting the most out of my dollar does not necessarily mean getting more items faster. Sometimes it means getting more quality. Bess Nielson once said, "true luxury is that which gives as much to one’s spirit as it does to one’s material needs" (Selvedge 79). Buying food from Superstore does something to fill my material needs. But buying goods from the farmer’s market allows me the opportunity to support local businesses, enjoy the creativity of local, independent artisans and meet them face-to-face. This meets my material needs as well as my spiritual needs for community, connection and contribution.

Recently the Slow Food movement has gained recognition and influence across the globe. In the mid-1980s Slow Food was born in opposition to the proliferation of "identical, repeated, predictable" fast food (Sterling 112). Alice Waters, in her foreword to Carlo Petrini’s book Slow Food: The Case for Taste, poignantly summarizes the key principles held up by the movement, and the impact they can have on one’s thinking and everyday experience:

Under Carlo’s remarkable leadership, Slow Food has become a standard bearer against the fast-food values that threaten to homogenize and industrialize our food heritage. Slow Food reminds us that our natural resources are limited, and that we must resist the ethic of disposability that is reflected everywhere in our culture. Slow food reminds us that food is more than fuel to be consumed as quickly as possible and that, like anything worth doing, eating takes time. Slow Food reminds us of the importance of knowing where our food comes from. When we understand the connection between the food on our table and the fields where it grows, our everyday meals can anchor us to nature and the place where we live. And Slow Food reminds us that cooking a meal at home can feed our imaginations and educate our senses. For the ritual of cooking and eating together constitutes the basic element of family and community life (Petrini ix-x).

The principles described here—preservation of cultural diversity, wise use of natural resources, allowing time for creation and enjoyment, connecting product with raw material and producer, and working in community—have deep relevance to patterns of production and consumption of all objects, including clothing.

In this essay I compare "fast fashion" to fast food, and examine how conventional fast fashion practices today have led us to a critical point of decision. The damaging effects of wasteful consumption on Earth, and the uniformity that globalizes fast fashion produces leave us yearning for an approach to fashion that has more integrity, endurance, and meaning. In the same way that Slow Food arose to build sustainable alternatives to careless, frenzied eating habits, the Slow Fashion movement provides viable alternatives to cheap, speedy, image-based fashion. It calls us to give care, attention and intention to our fashion purchases. It calls us to be creative and work within limited resources, leaving behind the attitude that more and bigger are always better.

The Problem of Fast Fashion

When you think "fast fashion" you can think disposable, short-lived and cheap; seasonal change, image glorification, and mass marketing; mass production, quantity, standardization, and identical product; mediocre quality, lack of meaning and value; and international acceptance and global homogenization. These are the qualities that characterize fast fashion, and for many North Americans it is the only type of fashion they know.

Fast fashion has been made possible in our generation by a number of factors. According to Sarah Scatturo, one of the main factors is "the perfection of networked technological systems streamlining the design, manufacturing, and consumption of clothing" (Scaturro 469-88). Also, the development of man-made fibres and genetically modified fibre crops have enabled textile producers to push the limits of the land’s natural capacity as well as bypass more labour-intensive, time-consuming natural fibre processing procedures in order to meet growing demands for clothing. In addition, the lifting of import quotas in January of 2005 (in accordance with the World Trade Organizations Agreement on Textiles and Clothing) allows inexpensive foreign imports to flood once-protected markets in Canada and the US, in turn increasing competitiveness among manufacturers (Industry Canada 4). Advancements in global communications have made way for fast, effective global marketing strategies, resulting in fleeting fashion images and trends being disseminated to all ends of the earth.

As a result, much of the Western world has an increasingly insatiable lust and ability to buy more clothing than ever before. According to Sandy Black’s investigation into this issue, "Relative to income, clothes are now far cheaper than they were a few decades ago. Clothing sales have increased by 60 percent in the last ten years. We now consume one third more clothing than even four years ago…and discard it after wearing just a few times or indeed, even once" (Black 14).

In the same way problematic fast-food values are manifested in the North American obesity pandemic, the consequences of fast fashion gluttony are becoming increasingly evident. For example, in the UK, 30 kilograms of textile and clothing waste per person is dumped in the landfill each year! (Collet 18). There are also the problems of sickness and death resulting from the use of pesticides on conventional cotton crops, water pollution and damaged ecosystems from textile manufacture waste, and a great deal of energy and water used to make and care for an overabundance of clothing (Scatturo 469-88).

Farmers in Thailand grow organic cotton
along the banks of the Mekong River

In addition to the burden on the planet and the resulting illnesses for those in polluted areas, fast fashion takes a toll on the factory workers who must meet high demands for output. We have all heard sad stories of workers being extremely underpaid and overworked to meet the demands of massive global retailers. Thanks to trade liberalization, this pressure is now not only felt by overseas workers but also by Canadian manufacturers, as they struggle to compete in the global manufacture market (Industry Canada 5). The Earth and its people are groaning under this weight of injustice and greed.

An Opportunity to Celebrate

Situations like this inevitably dampen our spirits. However, there are two kinds of sorrow: one that leads to death, and one that leads to repentance. The first type despairs, seeing no future, no hope and no opportunity for change. The second type acknowledges what is wrong and turns around to walk in the other direction, celebrating the opportunity to change, and looking beyond the situation towards the potential.

Slow Fashion is like the brave soul who leaves the masses on their wide, smooth dead-end highway to march steadily along a narrow, difficult path to a bright future. In Grace Cochrane’s article "Australia and New Zealand: Design and the Handmade" she states that businesses working on a smaller scale have the option of "offer[ing] something that is of higher value and produced in smaller runs that reach a particular discerning market both at home and elsewhere". She goes on to say that while the "game is hard", it is also "often rewarding and distinctive" (Alfoldy 64). Many advocates of Slow Fashion are small enterprises and, though their position is tough in light of powerful and vast retailers, I am convinced that they have an essential and influential role to play. The success of the Slow Food movement gives us hope, and at this point I would like to parallel the two movements by adapting the principles quoted earlier:

Under the leadership of brave designers, Slow Fashion has become a standard bearer against the fast-fashion values that threaten to homogenize and industrialize our fashion heritage. Slow Fashion reminds us that our natural resources are limited, and that we must resist the ethic of disposability that is reflected everywhere in our culture. Slow Fashion reminds us that fashion is more than image to be consumed and changed as quickly as possible and that, like anything worth doing, creating valuable vestments takes time. Slow Fashion reminds us of the importance of knowing where our clothes come from. When we understand the connection between the clothes on our backs and the fields where fibre grows and the studios where fabric is shaped and embellished, our everyday clothing anchors us to nature and the place where we live. And Slow Fashion reminds us that participation in the design process can feed our imaginations and educate our senses (author’s adaptation of Alice Water’s foreword in Petrini ix-x).

Slow Fashion responds to the problems of fast fashion by offering an alternative approach to design, production and consumption. When you think Slow Fashion, you can think value, quality, and craftsmanship; creativity within limitations, versatility, and personalization; staying power, heirloom quality, and extended life span; transparent production systems, regional and traditional craft skills, and collaboration.

Various designers exemplify these values in differing ways. Some extend the lifecycle of existing damaged or unloved garments by redesigning or custom fitting. Others make use of localized cooperatives that offer high-quality handwork and innovative applications of traditional craft skills. Some incorporate recycled or reclaimed fabrics into couture-type designs, while others use new materials to create long-lasting garments that can be worn in different ways by people of varying sizes and genders. Some work in collaboration with the end user by personalizing designs through colour or fabric choice, unique embellishments or perfect fitting. Sandy Black sums up the ethos simply: "buying long-lasting craftsmanship, highest quality and unique items means they will be treasured for a long time, becoming heirlooms of the future, and contributing to a lower rate of consumption" (Black 79).

If you are like me, you might still ask yourself how this type of business could actually survive—and could it thrive? —in today’s consumerist society. If the success of the Slow Food movement is any indicator, then Slow Fashion will survive and grow through tenacious, innovative designers networking to share knowledge, to infiltrate conventional fashion institutions and to educate others. Because of the very nature of Slow Fashion, the businesses that adhere to its principles will not grow to become massive global retailers. As Bruce Sterling put it in his article "The Revenge of the Slow", a local product with "irreducible rarity" can only be sold to a select few across the globe, and not to the masses, as its production cannot be scaled up (Sterling 114-116). Slow Fashion designers instead need to unite their disparate niches through cultural networking (Sterling 116). The Internet is a valuable tool in this regard. It is also a way designer-makers can educate the public, provide transparency about their production methods, allow consumers to collaborate, and sell directly to consumers without the mediation of retailers.

Conclusion

Slow Fashion is a baby movement, having been born of the Slow Design movement just within this decade. Its growth hinges on a shifting of heart and attitude towards the way we consume clothing—from an attitude of carelessness, ignorance and waste to one of stewardship, intention and pleasure in simple, valuable everyday experiences. This shift will take time and effort, but through steadfast commitment on the part of designer-makers and educators awareness will grow. My hope is that people will be so enamored with the beauty and virtue of Slow Fashion’s principles and product that they will forget about the less satisfying alternative of fast fashion.

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Works Cited

Alfoldy, Sandra, ed. NeoCraft: Modernity and the Crafts. Halifax: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 2007.

Black, Sandy. Eco-Chic: The Fashion Paradox. London, UK: Black Dog Publishing, 2008.

Clark, Hazel. "Slow + Fashion—an Oxymoron—or a Promise for the Future…?" Fashion Theory. Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 427-446. December 2008.

Collet, Carole. "The Next Textile Revolution". Responsive Textile Environments. Ed. Sarah Bonnemaison and Christine Macy. Halifax: TUNS Press, 2007.

Industry Canada. A Canadian Approach to the Apparel Global Value Chain. Prepared by Milstein & Co Consulting Inc. March 2008.

Petrini, Carlo. Slow Food: The Case for Taste. Trans. William McCuaig. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

Scaturro, Sarah. "Eco-Tech Fashion: Rationalizing Technology in Sustainable Fashion". Fashion Theory. Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 469-88. December 2008.

Sterling, Bruce. "Revenge of the Slow". Metropolis. Vol. 27, No. 8, pp. 112-116. March 2008.

#12: Panmai Group's silk magic

2010-02-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

Jan. 13, 2010

This is our 4th visit in as many years to Panmai Group’s shop in a small market town in Isaan (Thailand’s Northeast region) that’s central to the villages where Panmai members live and work. Upon arrival, we’re warmly greeted by office manager Malee and her assistant Oom. Pun, a former staff member, is also there; she’s made a special trip from Bangkok to facilitate our order. We present gifts of dried strawberries from Chiang Mai and a card of Nova Scotia art quilter Laurie Swim’s work. Malee and Oom know Laurie’s work from a previous visit when we took them to her website to show them why we cut their precious silks into small squares – for art quilting! [Have a look inside our photo book about Panmai.]

We immediately notice that their stock is lower than last year. Oom has recently returned from a colossal handicraft and food fair just outside Bangkok. Much to our surprise, we learn that sales were good – a refreshingly different story than what we’ve been hearing from other weaving groups this trip with the effects of the global recession apparent.

Most noticeable is the small amount of silk fabric in stock. We learn that this is not a coincidence but a choice: the co-op is no longer stocking large amounts of fabric, which makes good sense in tighter economic times. It also makes sense when one considers the supply and demand of the village-raised silk yarns that Panmai members weave.

The limited fabric selection concerns us, though, as we had planned to this year to stock up on our 100% Silk. 100% Art. silk square packages. We share our concern with Malee and Oom, as well as our plans to have a TAMMACHAT booth at Quilt Canada 2012 to be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, just an hour from where we live. At Quilt Canada 2008 in Newfoundland, these silk squares were extremely popular and our plan was to feature a new selection of patterns and palettes in 2012.

Through our discussions, they agree to put aside for us a metre or 2 of any fabrics woven for special orders in the coming years. This should provide us with the variety we need without creating problems for the group, as they won’t need to set up their looms to weave the small quantities we need.

A group of Panmai members who dropped off their weavings

at the shop while we were visiting.

Our 3 days with Panmai are busy days filled with making orders for silk scarves in their always popular colours of deep cranberry, rust and eggplant, plus new colours and designs that we develop together. Our orders are a mass of details that require a myriad of decisions. Just a few:

Colour
Can they make turquoise? No. Lavender? Of a sort. Can they make this year’s “must have” colour – i.e., grey? Yes, of course. At this time of year? Yes, but not the particular shade that comes from butterfly pea flowers, dok anchan, which are now setting seed.
Size
Which designs come in standard sizes because of the set-up of the loom? Most of them. Which can we play with? In width, only a few. In length, most.
Weight of silk
Is the yarn made from the inner, middle or outer filaments of the cocoon, or a combination of 2 of these?
Stiffness of the handwoven silk scarf
Is it made with 1- or 2-ply yarns? The 2-ply yarns are preferred by Thai buyers but yield a stiffer scarf.

These detailed discussions are part of our learning each visit – this year we focus on the information we need to make custom orders for our new lines of silk scarves, along with custom orders of silk fabric. We tell Panmai about the growing interest in “eco fashion” and they teach us how best to order fabric by the metre for emerging “eco designers.”

Ideally, we should give the co-op plenty of notice of large orders so they can ensure an adequate supply of organic mulberry leaves to feed the silkworms. The co-op now has only a handful of members who raise silkworms and hand-reel the silk (i.e., sericulture), but they have a practice and a system to buy yarn from neighbouring villages. Nonetheless, hand-reeled, village-raised silk yarns are becoming more and more difficult to obtain, as the market is flooded with less expensive, factory-produced silk yarns (or silk “look-alikes”) from Vietnam and China.

On the 3rd and last day, I discover, quite by accident, several bags of tangled silk yarns – in regal purple, soft gold, vibrant raspberry, deep rust, fresh leaf green, coffee bean brown. We learn that the Panmai’s members who live and work in Khmer villages are particularly skilled at creating the vibrant colours that draw us to Panmai’s silks.

With Pun and Malee, I spend my last few hours in Kaset Wisai teasing apart silk yarns to create 3 sample cards of these extraordinary naturally dyed silk yarns: one for Panmai’s shop, one to send to the weaver to match a particular colour request and one for TAMMACHAT. I’m in heaven!

Ellen (Nok Noi)

#11: Prae Pan Group: Back to Our Roots

2010-02-18T17:52:00.000-08:00

Jan. 6, 2010

TAMMACHAT was born after our second visit to Prae Pan Group in the northeastern Thai city of Khon Kaen. So we have a particular fondness for this women's weaving group and always look forward to our annual visit. This year was no exception.

As we pull up in front of the shop, which houses the office, storeroom and sleeping quarters for staff, I marvel that this women’s co-operative managed to buy this building and maintain it for 22 years. This was part of the co-op’s plan from the beginning: to develop a self-sufficient community business run by village women. [You can read more of the Prae Pan story on their own blog, created last year by a volunteer from the Philippines.]

I look at the row of shoes outside to see if I can tell if our friends Pii Yai and Bo are there yet, slip mine off and enter the shop.

Bo and I greet each other warmly. She’s a long-standing volunteer with the co-op who’s currently helping staff to re-organize and create new systems since the passing last year of Wanee, the shop’s long-time manager. We learn from Bo that co op staff is working to sell down existing inventory at last year’s prices. New inventory will be priced higher to meet the growing expenses of running the shop and to pay the weavers fairly. Co-op policy to buy work outright from members has not changed.

Pii Yai, a rural development worker and another long-term volunteer advisor to Prae Pan (and now good friend of ours), arrives soon after we do and, after much excitement, the 7 of us settle down to work, including the 3 staff people we’ve met on previous visits: Mae Ooan, Mon and Fon, who is growing into the role of manager.

Our time together is a jumble of languages. Bo pulls out her English from her long-ago university days. Pii Yai always surprises us with her rapid-fire speech in both languages. Fon can understand some English, but none of the staff speak it. Alleson’s Thai holds her in good stead, especially when she and Fon speak one-on-one, but she always wishes she spoke better and understood more. And I listen intently, understanding more and more Thai, trying to put sentences together as best and as often as I can with my limited vocabulary. It’s fun, sometimes confusing and always remarkable as we cross cultures and learn from each other.

We present our gift to the group: a hand-felted wool wall hanging made by our friend Bea Schuler, a spirited Nova Scotian artist, farmer, mother and more. It’s a representation of life by the ocean in our province, a textile offering. They are thrilled and pore over it, removing and replacing the small wool figures in little window pockets that grace the lighthouse, before giving it a special place on the wall. I try to explain that it’s made from sheep’s wool. But my tones are wrong and instead, as I learn many hours later, I have instead said that it was made from the hair of an old person! Laughter follows us throughout the entire 5 day visit as I continue to practice saying “wool” and “old person.” I love this kind of enriching exchange that connects us on a very human level.

This visit is filled with orders for silk scarves – our passion – along with cotton scarves and bags, woven in part with handspun cotton for an interesting texture. But, as always, we also build in mutual learning. This year, our offering is 3-fold:

computer and internet training (email and the web) for Bo and Pii Yai, who both got laptops for the first time this past year and struggle with many of the English commands,
advising on shop displays and signage, rewriting the English side of Prae Pan’s shopping bag and hangtag, and
suggesting specific ways to reach Thai and foreign visitors to Khon Kaen with a presence on the city’s tourist map and brochures at the region’s tourism offices.

Mae Ouan, one of the staff, is the shop’s dye expert and an accomplished silk weaver. We eagerly open the glass doors on the silk cupboard in the back of the shop and begin to pull out silk scarves in soft blues, vivid greens, dove greys and gentle pinks. Where do all these colours come from? The next day, we get to see for ourselves when we visit 3 of the villages where Prae Pan members live.

Behind one house, we see the vine bai beuak winding up a tree. Its leaves are used to create the sky blues and soft, pewter greys that you can see in these scarves. The weavers in Mae Ouan’s village, Nawn Thoong tell us that the mature leaves give the most beautiful colours in October and November, after the rainy season has fed the leaves.

We’re familiar with krang, an insect resin that looks like black knot, a hard, knarly mass that can kill our plum trees in Nova Scotia and loves wild choke cherries. Both are created by insects that suck on the sap of the tree and spread their waste along small branches. These small branches – of the rain tree and sekay tree – are later carefully cut, the resin removed and boiled to produce a huge range of pinks, raspberries and purples. Sustainable care of the trees and other dye materials sources is part of Prae Pan’s approach to natural dyeing.

All kinds of leaves yield greens; barks offer browns and tans; both can be made all year round. The weavers – who also dye their own cotton and silk yarns – tell us that these are easy colours to make.

Pii Yai is particularly excited about ebony fruit. We stop at the base of a 30-foot tree and watch as a neighbour fetches a 20-foot bamboo pole and slices off a cluster of fruits with a sickle-shaped knife attached to the end of the pole. We inspect the ripe fruit and Alleson is urged to taste this fruit-of-many-uses – from dyes to food to medicine. Pii Yai, who set up our visits to 3 silk weaving villages, translates as the group of weavers/dyers tell us about ebony:

when used fresh, it gives a green colour
add lime and it gives an “old green”
when ripe fruits are used, a grey colour is produced
dye yarns repeatedly with ripe fruits and eventually they’ll appear black

We’re always impressed with their knowledge of local plants that can produce natural dyes. Mud (the best we can translate the Thai word din) is also used, along with the iron from village pumps, coconuts (both young and old) and various other substances. We hope that our excitement about the popularity of the colour turquoise will spur on new experimentation, as the women tell us they might be able to create it by playing with different fixatives for bai beuak leaves.

In each village we meet with a cluster of weavers. Some raise silkworms and hand-reel the silk from the cocoons into fine yarns, a complex process of sericulture. Others are expert at dyeing particular colours. All the women weave, although most prefer to weave cotton as it’s easier and less fussy than silk, which becomes sticky during rainy season.

I’m fascinated by sericulture and lift the sheeting that encloses one woman’s “silk house.” She quickly folds back the cloth cover used to protect the sensitive worms as they feed on mulberry leaves 3 times a day. Although she can make silk all year, she explains that it’s best made after rainy season as the silkworms are more productive in December and January and the silk more beautiful. We confirm that Prae Pan’s silk is organic – as with all village-raised silk, no chemicals are used at any step in the process of creating the silk yarns. If members do not have enough silk yarns, they buy them from other local villages where they are also created organically.

In Ban Suk Som Boon, we meet with Mae Pet (the president of Prae Pan), Mae Oorai (who is also on the Prae Pan governing committee, made up of representatives from each village and is the group secretary in this village) and Mae Pan (pictured on the cover of our book about Prae Pan). Most of the active members in this village work on repeat custom orders for hemp/cotton fabric for a Japanese customer. They tell us they like this long-term, consistent relationship, going for 4 years now, and are happy to be building a long-term relationship with TAMMACHAT, which they hope will eventually yield larger orders. One of the benefits for us of working with group’s like Prae Pan is that they can manage large orders, assigning the work to the weavers who are best able to fill them.

In each village, we ask what the weavers like to weave. The answer comes quickly: “whatever we can sell.” Some of the weavers express interest in weaving fabric by the metre, especially after we explain about the growing interest in “eco fashion.” They have few opportunities to meet customers directly, so they appreciate learning more about international markets from us.

The village visits end with a shared meal, more stories and more laughter. So too ends our busy time at the Prae Pan shop, as we plan our return in a few weeks to follow up on some new designs we’ve created together. Our relationship with Prae Pan embodies one of the principles of fair trade we cherish.

Ellen (Nok Noi)

#10: Eri Silk: Peace Silk from Thailand

2010-01-25T06:01:00.000-08:00

Dec. 22, 2009

It’s almost dusk when we arrive at the Traditional House Museum set in the grounds of Chiang Mai University Art Centre. We've come to attend The Living Seeds Festival, hosted by Pun Pun, a sustainable living centre located outside the city. It has brought together organic farmers, mud house builders, musicians and educators to celebrate and teach about sustainable living.

Under one of the traditional teak houses raised on posts, we find Thitichai, a 45-year-old Thai textile designer, surrounded by some of his naturally dyed textiles. We browse through the scarves hanging on a twine line and find an unusual, highly textured piece. We know it's not traditional mulberry silk, yet it is different from other natural fibres we've seen here. It turns out to be handspun Eri silk, which was introduced into Thailand a few years ago. [See our blog entry of Feb.3, 2008 on Eri silk.] Thitichai tells us that Eri slk is now created in 16 villages around Thailand, thanks to trainings done by Fai Gaem Mai, Knowledge and Technology Center for Northern Textile at Chiang Mai University.

We're fascinated to see the Eri silkworms spinning their white cocoons in a makeshift cocoon house on top of a table. It's made from a cardboard box which has been refashioned with cardboard dividers to create 2 by 2 inch "rooms" in which lie small, plump white silkworms and the beginnings of their cocoons. Next to their home sits a small bamboo basket of fresh green leaves. These small worms are very different from the huge Eri silkworms we saw in Ban Panasawan. We wonder if the difference in size is due to the different leaves they are fed here. We ask Thitichai if he eats the pupa and he assures us that no worms are killed in the production of this particular Eri silk (unlike the village we visited, where the pupae are eaten as an important source of protein). Like some Tussah silks from India, this Eri silk can be called "peace silk" or "vegetarian silk."

I'm drawn back again and again to this scarf, with its bands of dove gray created from ebony fruit alternating with the softer very pale, creamy gray of the undyed silk. The texture is marvelous. The warp (lengthwise) yarns are long, thin slivers. They have been painstakingly spun on the special spinning wheel introduced into Thailand by Fai Gaem Mai. The weft (crosswise) yarns show off the slubs -- thick, then thin sections -- that are a trademark of good Eri silk spinning. Together, they give the illusion of great depth and intricate weaving, created by the use of alternating rows of 2 colours of weft yarns.

The scarf is costly, due to the work of spinning these special yarns. I love the look and feel, so I buy it for myself. We talk with Thitichai about the possibility of returning on Monday to discuss an order for more. He seems reluctant at first, but then agrees to weave a small order of 10 scarves for us that will be ready in 2 months. Can we wait? Yes, of course. It takes the time it takes. "Slow fashion" indeed!

On Monday afternoon we return to the house where we now find Thitichai sitting upstairs on the porch that wraps around 2 sides of the building. We learn more about him over the course of a couple of hours and decide that, although we usually buy from rural women's weaving groups to give them much-needed income, this is a valuable project to support, as it's helping establish new traditions and artistry for the village weavers, built on the foundation of their age-old skills.

Fascinated by textiles at an early age, Thitichai studied with Mrs. Saeng-da Bunsiddhi, the founder of the Pa Da Cotton Textile Museum. [See our #6 blog entry about her.] He has a workshop just down the road from Pa Da -- a weaving centre with 30 floor looms, now employing 10 weavers, whom he gives creative reign to experiment with their own designs. He has won many international awards for his textile designs in Japan and Europe, including placing in the top 10 at a UNESCO textile competition.

He has also helped many Thai weaving projects. After winning an award from the King of Thailand for this work, he left his textile work behind to enter the monastery, becoming a monk and meditation teacher for 8 years. Now, returning to his passion for textiles, he runs the Living Textile Museum as part of the Traditional House Museum, where he teaches Eri sericulture (the creation of silk yarns), spinning and natural dyeing. He travels too to other parts of Thailand, teaching Eri silk skills as a volunteer. Thitichai's eyes dance and his laughter rings out as he tells his story and lovingly shows us the textiles that drape over every surface of the room next to the porch where we first talk.

Thitichai's work now is to promote "living textiles," helping spread new sericulture, spinning, dyeing and weaving techniques -- creating new ways for village weavers to earn income. He loves working with Fai Gaem Mai, he tells us, and we're happy to support his work, even on a small scale with our small order, which he insists on spinning and weaving himself to ensure the highest quality. We suspect we'll see, in future, more of this kind of Eri silk here, as the weavers' skills grow and the weaving itself evolves with visions of creative new designs.

Ellen (Nok Noi)

#9: Suchada Cotton: Hearing the Story Again

2010-01-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

Dec. 18, 2009

The colour indigo -- painstakingly made from the leaves of the indigo plant (Indigofera tinctoria) -- conjures a depth of blue that can't be achieved with chemical dyes. Repeated dippings of cotton yarns, sometimes more than 20 times, can produce a blue so deep that it appears black. More importantly, traditional cultures on every continent have attached significance to indigo beyond a colouring agent.

We first met Suchada Cotton at the Sunday Walking Market in Chiang Mai last year. Their placemats in deep blues and rich browns snagged our attention as the dyestuffs that produce these colours are not frequently seen in Chiang Mai. More often you’ll see mor hom -- a blue cotton fabric produced in Prae from a "cousin" of indigo.

Conversely, Sakhon Nakhon province in Isaan (the Northeast) is well-known in Thailand for kram -- the Thai word for authentic indigo. This province is also home to the village dyers and weavers who produce Suchada Cotton's fabrics. Combined with the bark of the mango tree, indigo produces a deep green, also a popular colour for Suchada's many handwoven products. The rich coffee browns, the third in their trio of signature colours, comes from ma-kleu (Diospyros mollis), often referred to in English as Burmese ebony.

Talking later with Suchada in her stall at the Night Market, we learned that she’s from this village herself where the story is similar to the story all over rural Thailand: Most of the middle generation of women leave the village in search of factory work so they can bring a cash income to their families. Left in the village are the grandmothers and younger women with children. [Read our story about the Women's Organic Cotton Group in Ban Kokkabok for another version of this typical story.]

The 10 to 20 older women weavers and dyers in this group are rice farmers who do this work to make extra income after the harvest is brought in. These skills are a critical supplement to the family income, especially in these difficult economic times with the global recession reducing income from factory work while inflation increases prices. And Thailand's current political instability reduces tourism even farther.

The photos that Suchada showed us of women in her village show dyepots simmering over fires, leaves and barks being gathered, older women at looms. We've seen these photos before, in fact we've taken them ourselves and will, we hope, continue to see them despite the increasingly homogenous, global marketplace.

The term "slow fashion" truly describes this process of textiles produced by hand -- from the gathering of natural dyestuffs to the finished handwoven fabric, bags, scarves, placemats and tablecloths that come off the loom 2 months later.

Chiang Mai is a lively market for many goods from other parts of the country. Suchada's husband is from Chiang Mai and this link makes it an ideal place to bring the handwoven textiles as they make their way to new homes in Japan, Europe and Canada -- anywhere that natural fibres and dyes are popular.

Alleson (Pii Plaa)

#8: Hmong Flower Cloths

2010-01-16T17:10:00.000-08:00

Dec. 15, 2009

From Chiang Mai we headed north by bus to Chiang Rai province to meet with a group of White Hmong sewers. Our plan was to make an order for several dozen "pa'ndau" -- pronounced "pan-dow" and often translated as "flower cloth" -- a style of reverse applique that decorates many items used by traditional Hmong families.

Having no written language, Hmong rituals and artistry have been vital in keeping their unique culture alive. Extraordinary needlework has long been a large part of that culture; Hmong girls traditionally begin to learn the stitches for pa'ndau embroidery as young as 5 years old.

The last few years, we've bought many flower cloths through the Queen of Thailand’s SUPPORT Project -- a handicraft development program designed to boost farm families’ welfare, provide women with an important source of income and preserve cultural artistry. The SUPPORT Project was launched in conjunction with The Thai Royal Project Foundation initiated by the King of Thailand in 1969 to encourage hilltribe villagers to switch from the cultivation of opium poppies to alternative crops.

The flower cloths we've brought to Canada are often mounted on a piece of hemp about 12" square, as hemp has traditionally been retted and woven by Hmong women as well. The squares have been very popular at our events, especially with fibre artists. Last year we paired flower cloth squares with organic cotton from the Pattanarak Foundation to make cushion covers, which were just as popular.

Last year Ellen also set herself the task of finding a Hmong sewing group from which we could buy flower cloths directly to assure ourselves that the women were paid fairly for their work. Several dead-ends later, she found Patricia Solar of Izara Arts, who was able to put us in contact with a group of Hmong sewers.

With the help of Izara Arts' production manager Muay -- and her truck -- we travelled several hours into the "Golden Triangle" where Thailand meets Burma and Laos. Once we reached the White Hmong village, we also had the help of Kamonnit (the daughter of the head of the sewing group, Mai Li), whose job in the group is communications, sales and accounts. In addition to Hmong, Kamonnit is fluent and literate in Thai, and reads and writes enough English to use email.

A small crowd of us gathered around a rickety tin table in front of a tiny house -- Ellen and I, Muay and the mother of another Izara staff person, Mai Li, Kamonnit, the 5 older Hmong sewers and a passing neighbour. There we all were, almost blocking the street of the overgrown hamlet which was once a refugee settlement, speaking 3 languages while we poured over some samples we had brought with us. We learned from the sewers which elements of the designs were easier to sew, and which would take more time and therefore cost more. We also learned that no one in the area made hemp fabric, which we had suspected might be the case.

As we talked, Mai Li quickly folded a piece of paper and cut into it the shapes of one of the samples we had brought: a paper pattern that these skilled sewers could transform into a finished flower cloth. So this is how they make them so symmetrical, we realized. Ellen and I were both reminded of making paper snowflakes as children.

With the sewers' input, we settled on 2 designs that could be fairly made within our budget. We chose 3 colour combinations for each design and explained their complex details to Kamonnit, who carefully wrote out the 6 variations. We would buy the hemp backing cloth in Chiang Mai, where it was more readily available; they would provide the coloured cloth for the designs, as well as the accent threads, which we selected from a large plastic bag filled with a tangle of dozens of coloured threads. For extra clarity, we stapled to each colour of cloth 2 corresponding thread colours, while the sewers nodded their approval of this communication technique.

We made a 50% cash deposit, our usual fair trade practice, and took banking information to transfer the final payment directly into the group's bank account, once the order was finished. We promised to email the address where they would send the finished pieces by bus so they could be transformed into cushion covers by the Pattanarak Foundation, a non-governmental organization working on Thailand's other border with Laos, also along the Mekong.

A new challenge will be to find handwoven hemp cloth in Laos, home to many Hmong and other ethnic minorities who still live isolated rural lives in the upland areas of that mountainous country.

Alleson (Pii Plaa)

#7: The Lessons of Ban Yahu

2010-01-16T16:44:00.000-08:00

Dec. 14, 2009

Two things these trips remind us:

It's good to be flexible because we cannot predict, well enough control, the situations we find ourselves in, and
Our primary purpose is to put money into women's hands, especially poor rural women's hands -- regardless of our policies about production methods and group structures.

We were reminded of these lessons on our trip to Chiang Rai in the north of Thailand when, on the spur of the moment, our plans were changed for us. One minute we were spending what was left of the afternoon attending to some bookkeeping and blog writing, and the next we were in the back of a pick-up truck heading up a mountain. After one hour, the truck stopped in a remote village where pigs and toddlers shared a rutted dirt path that ran between a dozen or so buildings.

We climbed down from the truck and up a rickety ladder to a rustic home made from bamboo. Its porch was crowded with women of one of the local ethnic minorities, each clutching a well-used plastic bag.

Inside the plastic bags were loads of beautifully coloured shoulder bags woven from industrial fibres coloured with chemical dyes. Likely the yarns had been bought pre-dyed at one of the many textile shops adjacent to the market in most large towns in Thailand. But the colours were very pleasing, if not natural, the designs were unique and the weaving, done the hard way on a back strap loom, was very competent. Most importantly, right now we were right here and it was clear to us both that there was nowhere that our money could be better spent.

So if you attend one of our shows back in Canada and you see a collection of shoulder bags that look like nothing else in the room, you'll know that they are much more than bags; you'll know that they were our lesson to put those women's needs before our preferences.

Many thanks to Patricia Solar of Izara Arts, who works with village women's groups like this one in the north of Thailand, and who whisked us off in her truck for an ascent to this mountain village. Her work with hilltribe women like these helps them sustain their families. Please visit Izara Arts to learn more about their work.

Alleson (Pii Plaa)

#6: Pa Da Cotton Textile Museum

2010-01-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

Dec. 12, 2009

En route to visit Mai in Ban Tan in the North of Thailand, we stop at the Pa Da Cotton Textile Museum in Baan Rai Pai Ngarm, 70 km south of Chiang Mai. We turn off the highway into a straight gravel lane that's lined on either side with towering bamboo. Ahead, in the sunlight that filters through the dense clumps, slivers of dry leaves drift towards earth like a strange fall of snowflakes inside a green cathedral. I stop the bike so that Ellen can dismount and go ahead on foot with her camera at the ready.

Several hundred meters farther on there's a beautiful teak building shaded by large trees and surrounded by mature flowering shrubs. Like many traditionally styled wooden houses in the North, it sits on sturdy posts -- tree trunks really -- about 3 meters tall. This provides room below for a wide range of activities that are protected from the glaring sun of hot season and the heavy downpours of rainy season. Here the space is used as a weaving studio.

Above is the museum, which we visited last year. It's filled with traditional handlooms and other weaving and dyeing equipment, as well as photographs from earlier times. The museum celebrates and preserves the essential traditions of local cotton textile production, including the cultivation of native species of cotton and the use of natural dyes (tree barks, roots, leaves and berries). The museum is also a tribute to its founder, Mrs. Saeng-da Bunsiddhi.

Mrs. Saeng-da was born in 1919. Like most Thai and Lao weavers, she learned the traditional skills of dyeing and weaving from her grandmother. She learned additional techniques from the ethnic minorities who live in the area, an area rich in cotton textile traditions. Like most women of the time, she wove fabrics for her family's use -- including the khaki fabric needed for her husband's uniforms during World War II.

After the war, she began collecting weaving equipment and started growing native cotton plants. Together with other local women, she started the Housewives’ Union to increase income and employment opportunities, to preserve traditional dyeing and weaving techniques and to promote handicraft production. Initially, the women wove outside harvest season (as is often still the case) but the spinning, dyeing and weaving eventually grew to employ 40 of Mrs. Saeng-da's neighbours. Decades later, on the day we visited, we saw only 4 women at spinning wheels and 2 at looms.

We greet Mrs. Saeng-da's elderly daughter, who now runs the centre. As she leads us to the textile shop that sits behind the museum, she shows no sign of remembering us: this is not unexpected, given the number of foreigners who might visit during a year but it is unusual, as most Thais do remember us even if they’ve only met us once.

We place an order for 72 placemats in the same colours and pattern that we purchased last year. The colours -- intense indigo blues, rich greens and deep purples – are stronger than we usually find and the nubbly texture of the handspun cotton adds to their charm. The combination was popular last year and we expect it will be this year too.

We are lucky enough to pick up a few scarves in the same colour palette. All these pieces -- like the museum and weaving centre -- are unique to Baan Rai Pai Ngarm. They are also testaments to the hard work of Mrs. Saeng-da, who in the 1980's was declared a National Folkcraft Artist in Thailand. We're happy to recognize and help preserve these traditional practices through our purchases.

Alleson (Pii Plaa)

[Ellen's note: Thanks to Bhothong Keowsuddhi, Director of the Northern Industrial Promotion Centre, for background information, presented in a brochure distributed at the centre.]

#5: Visiting Mai at Junhom Bantan

2010-01-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

Dec 12, 2009

It's a lovely day of driving to visit Junhom Bantan, a social enterprise that works with cotton weavers in 2 small villages 100 kms south of Chiang Mai. Mindful of our carbon footprint, we usually travel by public transit when we can't go by rented motorbike. However, cotton products are bulky as well as heavy (not great on a motorbike) and the village is 20 kms beyond the junction where the bus stops, so we rent a car for the day. This allows us to also stop along the way at the Pa Da Cotton Textile Museum (to be covered in the next blog entry).

Alleson recollects that the turn off the main highway is trickier than it appears on the map and, indeed, it is but we negotiate the further junction and head out the tertiary road through a dry scrub forest and look closely for the side road to the village. The turn-off is several kilometres further than we remember so we make a note for next time. Along this fourth road, stunted fruit trees are interspersed with stands of bamboo. The land is dry and rises gently towards one of the 5 chains of mountains that run north-south through Northern Thailand. It appears not well suited for rice farming despite the harvested fields that we also see.

Four kilometres along, and well past the small corner store where we asked for directions last time, we pull up alongside a wall covered in vines, unsure where to go next. Happily, Mai appears out of a driveway to greet us; we've arrived despite feeling lost!

We met Mai 2 visits ago and we've become more and more fond of each other with each visit. Her mother was one of the original members of the weaving group from which Junhom Bantan has evolved. The group was started 15 years ago with help from the government and the local branch of Homenet, an international organization that works with home-based workers. Mai now co-ordinates the re-conceived social enterprise. She develops new designs, manages finances and production and, most importantly, provides an important link to international markets that the group would otherwise be unable to reach.

Like many Thai women of her generation, Mai was able to go to university, studying marketing; this was a feat for her parents, who, as farmers, struggled to raise enough money to supplement her small scholarship, with help from the income generated by the weaving and dyeing. As many studies have shown, when women, in particular, are able make money beyond a subsistence level, they put it towards their children's nutrition and education. Although she did go to university, and clearly has skills to show for it, Mai tells us that she prefers to live in the village where she grew up -- unlike many of her peers.

During our visit she tells us that her father is a master dyer and that, in Ban Tan and the neighboring village, men do much of the heavy work of dyeing the cotton yarns, while a group of 40 women do the weaving. Our order of 124 pieces in 5 designs will take them 2 months to produce. This is "slow fashion" -- from the time needed for careful, handmade production to the timeless designs and the quality of the work that will help these pieces last.

Mai tells us the same story about the cotton yarns that we've heard from others: She wants to provide more organic cotton products, especially for her international customers, but there is not enough organic cotton grown in Thailand to meet the demand. Last year, she made the decision to invest in 1,000 kg of handspun cotton from a local Karen village, grown without chemicals. (She explained that she doesn't use the term "organic" because of the proximity of heavily sprayed fruit trees near the cotton fields.)

At the same time, most weavers prefer to use factory-produced cotton yarns for the warp (lengthwise yarns on the loom) because they are thinner yet stronger than handspun cotton yarns. This means that they are both easier to thread through the weaving comb as well as less likely to break during weaving. Each type of yarn has its own advantage. Handspun cotton yarns are very likely chemical-free and produce uniquely rich textures while machine spun cotton yarns are ideal for intricate patterns and can result in an especially lovely drape. Both have their place, and as our principal objective is to provide rural women with much-needed income, we purchase both.

All the dyes used by Junhom Bantan are made from locally gathered dye materials: barks are boiled to give soft tans, deeper browns and even yellows; leaves colour the yarns in various shades of green; krang (insect resin) yields pinks, magentas and pale purples; and the leaves of the indigo shrub, through an alchemy all their own, provide a wide range of blues. Some of these dyestuffs are purpose-grown; others grow wild in the district and are gathered sustainably to ensure they will continue to be available to the dyers' pots. (Those of you who have bought our wrap pants in the past have seen some of these beautiful colours, as these pants come from this group.)

I asked Alleson to compare her ability to speak Thai with Mai's ability to speak English. She tells me that they are probably on par, although Alleson is practicing her Thai on a daily basis now, while Mai only has intermittent opportunities to practice. We were quite able to communicate, complimenting their spoken language with drawings and samples put together in small piles. I also photographed several scarves to keep a visual record of our order.

As we left, after spending the afternoon together discussing designs, placing our order, sharing stories about our countries, laughing and eating bananas that Mai brought from her garden, she invited us to stay with her in her village on our next trip. She will introduce us to some of the weavers and dyers, which we always love as this helps us tell their story better.

Also, we'll take the bus next time, as Mai has offered to have us picked up at the junction. We can't wait!

Ellen (Nok Noi)

#4: How we communicate with the weavers

2009-12-13T01:01:00.000-08:00

We're often asked if we can recommend our driver and interpreter that we use to visit the weaving groups in Thailand and Laos from whom we buy the naturally dyed silk and cotton textiles we sell in North America. We laugh and sometimes wish it were so easy (although not usually so, as it's much more fun the way we do it).

As we begin our 5th buying trip -- which we always describe also as a networking trip -- I am reflecting on the many ways we communicate with the weaving groups. Rarely have we ever hired someone to interpret who is not also integral to the group with whom we're working. Here's a sampling of ways we communicate with the weaving groups:

We rely heavily on Alleson's Thai. Since she lived in Thailand almost 8 years, she can get around quite well, although she feels her vocabulary is slipping each year that she spends 8 months at home in Canada. Still, with some effort, she has added to words to her weaving lexicon: loom, warp, weft, heddle (and other terms she has had to learn first in English!), to name a few. In fact, if she hadn't been able to carry on a conversation in Thai the first time we visited Prae Pan Group in Khon Kaen, where TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles was born, I seriously question if we'd have embarked on this fair trade enterprise in the first place.
We also rely on board members of the 2 largest weaving co-ops we work with who speak English, although at times we look at each other and shrug in confusion, because sentence construction in Thai and English is vastly different. Mai pen rai, we end up saying, in Thai -- never mind, it's OK, not to worry!
Staff at a few of the weaving groups (or executive directors of NGOs that work with village groups who do the natural dyeing, weaving and sewing of the products we buy) are, at times, an invaluable resource. We've spent time working with field staff exchanging words and finally coming to common understandings. In Laos, we've more heavily relied on staff of weaving centres (or the daughter of 1 group's founder, who lives in Australia) to help us with orders and provide information.
We also bring photographs of products we've bought in the past, draw pictures of products we'd like to design together, occasionally borrow the services of a friend to translate, especially when we need to use the phone -- and we laugh a lot.

One way or another, we manage to choose textiles from stock already woven and make orders for new pieces. Often, as you'll read in future blog entries, we're invited to share a meal, take home a bag of bananas or visit the person we've been working with, with a gracious invitation to stay in their home.

A final note: I have been studying Thai at home in Canada via the internet, podcasts and my notebooks from lessons I took 2 trips ago in Chiang Mai. I could not do this work with the language skills I presently have, but being able to compliment -- in Thai -- the women who do this highly skilled work, tell brief stories about life in Canada (especially as it relates to our experiences here) or comment on the food we're sharing goes a long way to building relationships that are a key element of fair trade.

All for now,

Ellen (Nok Noi)

#3: Train impressions

2009-12-10T20:08:00.000-08:00

On Dec. 1st, Ellen and I landed in Bangkok, where we spent 2nights at our usual guesthouse, that still charges USD$10 for a double fan room with shared bath down the hall. During the next 2 days, we met to discuss probable orders with 4women from as many groups, before heading to Chiang Mai 600 kilometres to the north.

At 9 pm on Dec. 3rd, we climbed aboard Train 51 from a small neighborhood station and quickly settled into our berths. Like the guesthouses we frequent, the walls were dirty but the sheets and floors were clean. Despite the mouldering carriages and increasingly frought safety record of the State Railways of Thailand, I still enjoy the 2nd class sleeping cars (called "bogeys), if I can secure a ticket for a lower berth! Fortunately, we have Thai friends who purchased our tickets in advance and mailed them to us, so we had tickets for our preferred date, time and seats.

The next morning I awoke to a few puffy clouds in a rich blue sky as the sun rose golden over recently harvested rice fields. I popped a straw into the box of soymilk purchased on the platform the night before and laid back down with "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini. The berth's thick curtains shielded me from the other passengers and prompted a child-like sense of cocooning. Fields, pages and minutes passed. Eventually I popped open the can of "Birdy" I'd also brought along and enjoyed the sweet, milky coffee it contained, as well as the lovely laziness of train travel.

By 8:30 the whole car was stirring so I decided it was time to dress and join them. When the porter came by to flip the berths to daytime seating, I made an effort to breathe calmly through the same surly silence he had shown us the night before. Eventually, my rusty Thai elicited a few polite responses before our brief exchange ended. Score one for me!

Uncharacteristically, Ellen slept several hours later than I did. When she arose, happy but hungry, our previous resolve to decline the railway's factory food breakfasts in favour of food hawked from the platforms began to waiver when no such vendors appeared. Eventually, we were rewarded with various yummy traditional foods: khao lam (sticky rice steamed with cocnut milk inside bamboo tubes), phat thai (rice noodles stir-fried with tofu, dried shrimps, scrambled eggs, bean sprouts and garlic chives in roasted chili paste), and a palate cleansing portion of pomelo fruit (peeled and cleaned segments laid out on a wee tray): all of this for 60 baht ($2.00).

After eating we sat quietly across from one another, rubbing each other's feet while we looked out on the fields that stretched to the foothills on the horizon. In between the shorn fields drying under the sun's glare, green profusion blocked out the sky as bamboo, teak trees and others strewn with prolific creepers delighted my gaze more than any Christmas tree would have had I stayed in Nova Scotia for this holiday season.

And besides...train travel has a tiny carbon footprint! Win win: it's easy to be green when choices like these are available.

Alleson

#2: Let the travels begin

2009-11-29T04:14:00.000-08:00

After a good fall show season, we're heading out tomorrow for 4 months in Thailand and Laos. As always, we have visits planned with weaving groups with whom we've been working for the last few years. Top of our list for this trip is sourcing organic silk and organic cotton fabric for several designers who value fair trade and working with handwoven, organic fibres and natural dyes. We also have several new groups to visit, as we've connected recently with some people doing interesting work with Thai weaving groups on organic cotton production.

In Laos, we will be visiting Mulberries' farm to see firsthand their work creating organic silk and have offered to make a book for them, similar to the 3 we've already created for 2 Thai weaving groups and a Thai NGO. We'll be delivering 15 copies of our latest book, Weaving Sustainable Communities, to the Pattanarak Foundation the day after we arrive in Bangkok. Take a peak inside TAMMACHAT's 3 books if you haven't already seen them.

And back at home in Atlantic Canada, we'll stay in touch with the newly formed Clothing and Textile Action Group, a group of people working within the Ecology Action Centre, based in Halifax, NS, on issues around sustainability, clothing and other textiles. We've been involved since the first meeting and value having a local group that shares our values and is taking active steps to change how we look at our current production and use of the textiles we wear and use.

Hitting the ground running, in our usual fashion!

In fair trade,
Ellen (Nok Noi, my Thai nickname, which means little bird) and Alleson (Pii Plaa, Thai for older sister fish -- hard to translate!)

#1: Planning our upcoming trip

2009-09-01T02:17:00.000-07:00

Our attention is now on planning for our fall holiday gift shows in Nova Scotia (Wolfville, Halifax and Lunenburg) and New Brunswick (our first time in Fredericton).

But even as this goes on, we are planning our upcoming trip:

contacting our weaving partners in Thailand and Laos to set up visits
reviewing what sold well this past year and planning orders
designing new pieces to add to our collections

Your input is welcome! Contact TAMMACHAT through our website. Join us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

#8: Of peacocks & indigo

2009-01-26T21:46:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Sakhon Nakhon -- one of the 19 provinces of Isaan (Thailand's Northeast).

We came here in search of handwoven cotton khram (indigo) textiles, an art practiced for generations in this area. These luscious blues have been very popular at previous TAMMACHAT events; probably because so many of our customers have the same hair colour that I do -- although it would be a challenge to name any colouring that doesn't look great with one of the umpteen shades of blue that can result from this natural dye, depending on the fibre, the season, the method of processing and the number of dye baths. We've been told that even the time of day is a factor -- BTW, early morning is the preferred time to dye the yarns.

I'm happy to report that our search has been very sucessful; we have not only found indigo products but we've found them made by women's groups in 2 different provinces and numerous districts, encompassing hundreds of kilometres, women and items!

Already on their way to Canada are some exceptional mudmee patterned indigo scarves. Mudmee, as some of you know, is a process of tyeing and dyeing the yarns before they are woven. These variegated yarns then line up on the loom, resulting in elaborate geometric, and sometimes figurative, patterns.

We visited one weaving group on the banks of the Mekong, where we were able to see and photograph each step of this process. While we were there we hosted a luncheon get-together with the group, where much laughter as well as great food was shared. We especially enjoyed a hilarious lesson on the correct pronunciation of Mae Nam Khong (Mekong River in Thai) -- next time you see Ellen, ask for a demonstration.

We rushed off from those visits in Ubon province to come north to Sakhon Nakhon, when we heard a provincial fair was in full swing where many weaving groups that specialize in indigo would be selling. Although we were invited to visit their villages, we settled on purchasing goods at the fair this year and have promised to return next year (prior to the fair's launch) to take them up on their hospitality and see first hand the work in progress.

We're sure that the many shades of indigo and the many styles of weaving that we're sending home today will make everyone an indigo fan.

Ellen has taken pictures of someone (?) wearing a selection of these wonderful cotton scarves with close-ups so you can see the woven patterns.

On a final note, a more personal anecdote: I was disappointed that, unlike in most other provincial capital towns, absolutely no one rents motorbikes here. I had hoped that we would have at least one day to toodle around and see the sights -- maybe have a serendipitous encounter with some weavers or ??? -- but without wheels it didn't seem possible. Anyway, having a little more time on our hands than anticipated, we returned to the fair where we saw a vendor who'd not been in her stall on our earlier visit. Not only did we find 2 more styles of scarves that we're sure will be a hit, but we also had a wonderful conversation and received another invitation to visit her home. Last but certainly not least, when she heard of my unrealized intention to rent a motorcycle, she offered me hers. After my 2 requisite polite declines, she was still insisting so I took her up on her offer, without so much as a baht (the Thai currency) or a passport as collateral. So...yesterday we had a fine time driving through the Phou Pan National Forest district and visiting the Phou Pan Palace. (Palaces are customary Thai tourist sites when there are no Royals in residence.)

And finally, here is one of the many Thai peacocks we saw at the Royal Palace, strutting his stuff!

Until next time,

Pii Plaa (aka Alleson)

#7: Organic cotton along the Mekong

2009-01-22T20:46:00.000-08:00

[This is a long entry, but one we think will paint a rich picture of what we're learning.]

Monday: 19 January 2009: Khong Chiam, Ubon, Thailand

This week we will continue our visits with members of some of the groups that work with the Pattanarak Foundation. Today we went to some women's homes. Last week, our study tour began with a visit to one couple's organic cotton field on the western bank of the Mekong River, where cotton, corn, vegetables and herbs are planted when the waters ebb as "cool" season begins.

We spent most of the rest of last week at a community learning centre, where a lively group of 7 women introduced us to their traditional production of cotton. They have perfected each step from the removal of the cotton seeds, to the fluffing, rolling and handspinning of the cotton yarns, which are then dyed with natural materials, dried and then re-wound several times to ready them for the loom. [Ellen will post a photo essay of this process when she gets access to a computer with the necessary software.]

The learning centre, built 2 years ago, is used primarily as a training centre for group members, local students and visitors from other weaving groups. It also houses a shop, where products are available for sale. Group members, like many women, work in their own homes surrounded by children and extended families, squeezing the work between their other responsibilities as mothers, wives, farmers, caregivers, etc.

Today we drive to a village of about 250 people who are primarily sustained by farming and fishing. The first home we go to doubles as a corner store. The woman here frequently rises fom her loom to sell a packet of washing powder or a bit of something else. In between customers, she returns to her weaving or to taking care of her children who, although small, appear old enough to be attending school but aren't.

The work on her loom is of particular interest to us because, unusually, both the warp and the weft are handspun. This means that the fabric she's producing is 100% organic, as well as thicker than the cloth produced from factory yarns. She is weaving with a 2-ply yarn so, when she is able to sit down, the work progresses quickly. She explains that she has not spun the yarns herself, despite the presence of 3 rustic spinning wheels nearby. Instead, she has bought the yarns from the village spinning group. "Baw mee waylaa wang," she shrugs, as she motions with her chin -- in the way people here do -- to the shop, the children and the house. "No time."

Aew, the Pattanarak field worker who is acting as our guide, asks the woman to bring out some already completed weaving, which is nothing like the white hand towels presently on the loom. We look through the pieces, which have an interesting mix of thick and thin yarns, designs resulting from both continuous and discontinuous supplementary warps and a choice of two colour palettes.

We choose 5 pieces that we will market as table runners. What a concept; what a contrast. There isn't a dining table in sight; only a cement sitting platform, covered with ceramic tiles, and little else.

The 3 of us continue our walkabout. Our next stop is at a tiny building of cement blocks, which have neither a skim coat of cement nor paint applied. What sticks in my mind, 6 hours later, are the battered and rusted pieces of corrugated roofing material that are nailed over the windows.

Outside, there are 2 young women and 2 very young children. One of the young women squats on the hard-packed dirt in from of the front door, while she winds soft green yarn onto bobbins with a spinning wheel of the type also used to spin cotton yarn. There is also a middle-aged woman, one of the women's mothers, we're told, standing by a well-used rice winnowing basket that contains several skeins of cotton yarns in 2 shades of green.

All of the yarns used in these villages are coloured with natural dyes made from locally gathered materials. The dyers pay particular attention to harvesting them sustainably to ensure a continued supply.

I take a closer look at the loom alongside the house. On it is a narrow warp of fine cotton yarn that has been spun in a factory. The thicker, handspun yarns are better suited to other types of weaving. I continue my inspection and count 20 sets of string heddles suspended from bamboo poles over the warp. "Photograph the heddles," I motion to Ellen, who always has her camera in hand. "They're fabulous."

We had been told in advance that this is a village where khit (supplementary weft weaving) is done. In particular, this woman weaves the elephants that are used as a decorative motif on many of the bags we've seen at Pattanarak's shop in Khong Chiam. The complex string heddles shape the elephant design that she weaves.

While the young woman winds the bobbins, we go next door to pay our respects to Yai, the 83-year-old grandmother who, as a young woman, came across the river from Laos to marry, raise a family and eventually teach daughters and granddaughters how to artfully manipulate the string heddles. Bundles of these threads tied to bamboo splints hang from various houseposts in the compound. They are the inheritance of their Lao foremothers: the heddles that the grandaughters have the stamina and eyesight to use, but do not yet have the skill to tie for themselves.

We sit with Yai while Aew steps outside to answer her mobile phone. It's hard not to look away from the old woman's gaze as she speaks a steady stream of village-accented Lao. Her mouth is a red slash of crumbled teeth and blackened gums; her skin appears to be a deep hepatitic yellow. Tiny and wrinkled, she appears shrivelled into a pile of skin and bones on the cement floor. I pick up the occasional phrase, which I optimistically weave into a meaningful narrative. I tell Ellen that she might be saying that now that she is 83 years old she should be dead already, like her contemporaries, but she does not die. The betel chewing has ruined her teeth, but not her health apparently. [Betel - the leaves and nuts of a local tree - is chewed throughout Southeast Asia for its social and psychotropic qualities. Particularly common among older women, we see betel being chewed in every village in Thailand.] Likewise, the tumeric-infused oil has kept her skin pliable, if yellow. When Aew returns and we are able to take our leave, we back out of Yay's presence with silent but hopefully graceful wais. [This is the gracious method of greeting and taking leave of people in Thailand and Laos, with hands brought together respectfully in front of you.]

We return to the loom next door to find the 2 young women working together; one is throwing the shuttle and the other is manipulating the bamboo sticks that control the string heddles, speeding up the work. In our 10-minute absence they have woven several rows of elephants, which they are now examining with Aew. The woman seated at the loom points out that the elephant on the far left of the piece is not quite like the others. It takes a practiced eye to spot the discrepency but clearly the weaver is not satisfied.

"Tomorrow," Aew translates, "she will have all of them pretty and she will begin to weave."

I understand that this means that some part of today will be spent correcting the strings responsible for the misshapen elephant, as well as winding the rest of the yarn onto bobbins, so that tomorrow the weaving can begin in earnest. I am reminded of a comment made several years ago by another weaver: "By the time you're ready to sit down at the loom to weave," she had said, "most of the work is already done."

The next house we visit is the home of the village weaving group's "fabric banker." She is weaving an open weave, fine cotton scarf alternating white and salmon on a white warp. With Aew's help, we clarify that another group member acts as the microcredit "banker" for the revolving savings and credit program that the weaving and spinning groups in the village have established with Pattanarak's help. We had discussed the group, its numbers, practices, products and history during our drive to the village this morning, so much of what we were seeing is an illustration of those discussions. Nonetheless, the reality is both more complex and more poignant.

The 4 of us go inside her home, while a half-dozen neighbours, extended family and/or group members gather on the outdoor sitting platform, constructed in the more traditional manner: hardwood boards supported by posts that had been dug into the hard-packed earth. While we look at the weaving stored higgly-piggly in a glass cabinet inside, someone comes in and hands our hostess a large toddler who is clearly ready for a pre-nap lunch.

While she nurses, we examine the various pieces. Aew occasionally translates our comments and preferences; our recommendations are noted, as the purpose of this visit is to help the weavers better understand market preferences. Eventually, we choose several dozen pieces. As is my habit, I fold everything, whether or not selected, to a standard size to fit the cabinet. When we are finished and a bill reckoned, the woman thanks me, through Aew, for putting everything back so neatly. Ellen explains that it's a habit that I'd acquired as a child from my father who had sold shirts for a living. This explanation is entirely appropriate, I thought, for people who, until recently, learned almost everything from their parents, beginning at a young age when play and work were not yet differentiated.

"Never mind," I said in the local dialect. "You don't have any free time," I added as I motioned to the weaving bank, the child in her lap, the loom outside the door. Her broad smile seemed to show that she had understood and appreciated my comment as well as my compulsive tidying.

We leave our purchases behind, along with a promise to return, and walk over to the next member's house. Aew explains that most of the members are out in the fields farming today, so our visit will be a little shorter. Perhaps they had forgotten our scheduled visit or maybe they considered bringing in their cassava harvest more important. Regardless, we were not offended. There were enough members at home with very young children, as well as those too old or infirm to do the heavy work that cassava requires.

Our next stop apparently falls into the latter category. Under the house, on the ubiquitous sitting platform, are 2 elderly women, lying down but not quite asleep. The various small tools and the mouths of the 2 women attest to the betel chewing session in progress.

We are introduced to the elder of the 2 women who is extremely hard of hearing and, from the look of her milky eyes, sight impaired as well. Aew explains that these days she mostly spins cotton and leaves the weaving to her daughter, but that she is a master weaver of khit. As if the woman understood Aew's explanation, she rises and sits at the loom where a tablecloth is in progress. Despite her obviously failing eyesight, the number of bobbins involved and the width of the piece, she proceeds to weave several rows while Ellen, having asked permission to photograph, puts her camera on video record. "Got it," she grins.

After her demonstration, she resumes her place on the platform with her companion. With Aew's help, we piece together their history, despite the difficulty posed by women who either can't remember, can't count or don't consider important, the numbers involved in their personal histories. They are sisters, maybe literally, maybe figuratively. Regardless, they are 6 years apart in age and came over the river together from Laos to Thailand to marry Thai men in this village. It's likely that they were 14 and 20 years of age at the time and that was about 40 or 50 years ago. Many of the women in the village are originally from Laos. This program builds on skills acquired long ago, as most of the women learned to weave from their mothers when they were about 10 years old.

Since the group began in the village 15 years ago, many of these women have received additional training in spinning, natural dyeing, weaving and/or product design from other rural weavers participating in similar groups in several of the neighbouring provinces. Each of the groups has access to somewhat different plants and qualities of water, so dyeing is often an experiment, regardless of the experience of the dyer. This woman had apparently helped train not only her daughter but others in khit weaving, before she retired to her spinning wheel, a process so well known by her hands that vision was unimportant.

Again, we take our leave and return to the home of the "fabric bank" member, where we pick up our purchases. While we'd been gone, her husband had twisted the fringes on 9 shawls we'd chosen, which had been unfinished only 45 minutes ago. He was not the only man we saw engaged in fibre work, although all of the weaving groups' members are women; Ellen and I had both remarked earlier at the complex and fine fishing gear being netted by another man in the village.

After a full morning, despite the exodus of most of the village to their cassava fields, we retired to the general store/restaurant where we encountered staff (perhaps the entire staff) of the adjacent school, easily identified by their crisp, military-like uniforms. The principal made it his responsibility to formally welcome us to the village as well as interview us in his better than rudimentary English. Before we left, he presented us with 5 kilos of yams, recently harvested.

Our daily life is always curious here, especially because of the juxtaposition of unlikely events. As if to illustrate my point, the eldery sisters walk by with towels on their heads, to protect from the mid-day sun, digging sticks in hand. They are off to their cotton fields where they, along with villagers in 5 counties on the banks of the Mekong, produce more than 2,000 kilos of organic cotton bolls per season.

This is what community development and poverty reduction looks like up close, along the banks of the Mekong, across the river from Laos. Buying from these rural women's groups meets our definition of fair trade and we are grateful for Pattanarak's help in introducing us to these women and working with us on special orders we design together for our Canadian market.

We hope you'll take a close look at the tablecloths, placemats, indigo jackets, scarves, bags and even cotton elephants we bring back and see the diligence, perserverance and life skills woven into every one.

Pii Plaa (aka Alleson)

#6: Pattanarak Foundation: weaving fair trade & development

2009-01-22T06:03:00.000-08:00

“Fair trade” is one of the principles of TAMMACHAT. Sometimes our customers ask us what that means; sometimes we ask ourselves whether we are actually able to practice it, given the many production stages involved in creating textiles.

Each piece of cloth (or finished textile product) involves many participants and processes, which add value at each step, to the initial raw commodity – fibre. Adding value and allowing people to earn income in their own communities are major goals of community development. At the same time, those additional steps make it difficult to employ the cooperative model common to agricultural commodities, such as coffee or sugar.

These issues were illustrated this week and last when we spent 8 days with villagers working with the Pattanarak Foundation, a non-governmental organization that works with disadvantaged populations in the rural border areas of Thailand.

Pattanarak has established numerous cotton production groups along the Thai-Lao border to help women set up a sustainable source of income in their “Alternative Livelihoods" program. With social networks and skills developed through these groups, as well as the income they make through the program, many women have gone on to participate in other community development programs, such as group savings and loans schemes.

To learn about Pattanarak first hand, and to see whether we would consider products purchased from them “fairly traded,” we signed up for a study tour with Pattanarak. We were based in Khong Chiam, home to the Nam Song Sii (i.e., Two-Colour Water), where the mighty Mekong meets the Moon River. We learned more about how villagers grow cotton without chemicals along the banks of the Mekong and how they transform them into extraordinary cloth – entirely by hand. And we were able to spend time with a number of the women involved with the program.

As we said throughout our time with Pattanarak, we were having “fun with language” too, each day building our Thai language skills with Aew, our capable and skilled development guide, who used our time together to grow her own English vocabulary and comfort speaking. Our 2 dictionaries were well-thumbed and our textile-related Thai (and Aew's English) vocabulary grew by leaps and bounds.

Ellen will post a photo essay to illustrate the entire production process – from growing the cotton organically along the banks of the Mekong to the finished fibre product, whether a bag, shirt, tablecloth or stuffed elephant!

And I will post another entry about TAMMACHAT, Pattanarak and fair trade that I hope will shed more light on what we're learning about what fair trade really means at a village level.

Happy reading!

Pii Plaa (aka Alleson)

#5: Happy In: visiting Panmai Group

2009-01-11T02:55:00.000-08:00

When we visit Panmai Group, we get a bit farther off the track; their office is located so it's convenient for their members rather than their customers. From Bangkok it's a train, then a bus and finally a songtheow to get there. [A songteow is a pickup truck fitted with 2 bench seats and a roof. It serves as a shared taxi and usually has an established route in areas too marginal to have bus routes.] This year we shared the songteow with 30 other passengers, mostly young teenagers travelling back to their villages on a Friday late afternoon.

The weather was fine and the roads were paved so it was all good, if a little crowded. At our destination, we checked into "The Happy In" (sic): a 'no-tell mo-tel' where clients' vehicles are discreetly parked behind hot pink curtains, rooms are equipped with large horizontal mirrors and condoms are free. We're told that it's also the only accommodation in town that has hot water showers and air conditioners. We appreciate the hot water and laugh about the rest, as do the locals when they ask us where we're staying.

The best part of the story, however, is the fact that Panmai seems to be doing better every time we visit them. Or perhaps the best part is the incredible colours that the group's members are able to achieve when they dye their village-raised, organic silk with local barks and other plant stuffs.

Regardless, the 2 days we spent with their 3 staff women were very productive. We chose more than 100 beautiful silk scarves in nature's rich shades of magenta and burnt orange, cedar and salmon, indigo and ebony. We also created and assembled 3 palettes of our popular silk squares (275 pieces!) including 2 new mudmee patterns -- one in a frosted cherry and one in a spray of spring leaves. (You'll have to wait to see these new palettes in person, but we'll have them on our website in April.)

We also discussed world economic trends with the office staff; all of us strategizing about sustaining our businesses in this time of economic downturns. They told us how important their export customers are for them and explained their new pricing structure that discounts domestic sales to remain competitive. We assured them that we were OK with the price differential that results in approximately 15% higher prices for their foreign customers, pricing more in line with what the weavers think they really should be receiving for their work.

We, in turn, explained that we could choose slightly narrower and/or shorter scarves, sizes which are actually well suited to our customers' tastes, and thereby maintain a lower price per item despite the double whammy of the Canadian's dollar's decline and the economic downturn.

By the end of the 2nd day, after much sticky rice and really spicy papaya salad, and after much translating, laughing and productive labour, we saw our box of treasures go off to the post office, said our goodbyes andf got onto the next bus, headed east-southeast to Ubon.

We left with the good feeling that TAMMACHAT, along with Panmai, will likely find a way through these economic troubles: not by squeezing our suppliers but by finding fair ways to keep prices in line with our customers' means.

Pop gan mai (Until next time),

Pii Plaa (aka Alleson)

#4: Pa Ao Weaving Group: silk specialists

2009-01-11T01:10:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, we rented a motorbike in the small city of Ubon Ratchathani, close to the Mekong River in Thailand's Northeast, and made our way -- with the help of a map and a hunch -- to Ban Pa Ao, a village known for its fine quality of silk weaving. When we found the village, we found it home to a large, village-based women's weaving group. We had also hoped to find naturally dyed silks there and were not disappointed.

This group is one of many that has received OTOP recognition. OTOP -- One Tamboon, One Product -- is a program started many years ago by a previous government. It gives star ratings to products that range from foods to simple handicrafts to superb textiles, designating products considered outstanding in each district. The Pa Ao Weaving Group, which also refers to itself as Glum Satrii (Homemakers' Group), has received 4 and 5 star OTOP ratings in past years for its superlative weaving.

On that first visit, we bought several naturally dyed silk scarves from the group's village shop. Unlike any designs we'd seen before, these scarves showcased mudmee designs (the tie-dyeing of the thread prior to weaving) with a seldom-seen contemporary flare.

We had hoped to meet this group again at last year's OTOP fair in Bangkok. Remarkably, we did find the group amongst the hundreds of stalls at last year's fair but they didn't have the scarves we were searching for and we were unable to describe them well enough to make an order.

Which brings this post to yesterday, when we set out on another rented motorbike in search of these unusual scarves. We arrived in the early afternoon to find 3 very helpful women at the Ban Pa Ao weaving shop but not the elusive scarves.

Rather than trying to persuade us to consider the conventionally dyed scarves that some of their members continue to produce, the staff took the opportunity to bring out some extraordinary, handwoven, naturally dyed silk fabrics that are available by the metre. We couldn't resist buying 5 particularly beautiful pieces (3 of which are shown below). These will be available upon our return home to Canada in April.

This piece has an amazing sheen with small vertical stripes. It's dyed with indigo and coconut husks soaked until the colour leaches into the water.

This piece is woven in a delicate flower pattern called dok pikhuun. It has a soft gray colour that is created with a dried fruit that is then boiled, pounded and soaked until the dye bath is ready.

This piece has a delicate shimmer obtained with jackfruit wood, another wood called prahot and coconut husk. The colours are made stronger by the addition of sai bua in which the silk yarns are soaked for a few days. It uses a mudmee design in the umber and pale green stripes, twisted threads and a white weft (cross-wise threads), which gives the shimmer.

Because we follow a fair trade model, we wanted to learn not just about these production details but also about the group which has mastered them: the group with whom we are working to establish a relationship. Here's some of what we've learned:

The group was started 22 years ago.
Ten years ago, it had 75 members and has since grown to 108, all local Pa Ao village residents.
Group members use chemical dyes and natural dyes, particularly local materials like kram (indigo), lac (which produces lovely pinks and reds) and magrua (ebony black). They have since learned to dye with other natural materials, such as coconut and jackfruit wood.
All dye materials are gathered locally.

At the group's shop and weaving centre, we were shown samples of dye materials and silk yarns that had been dyed with them. Here you see Alleson and Nan, a group member, looking at samples of natural dye baths prepared by local students.

Our visit was not quite what we had expected but this is always part of the fun. Thanks to Alleson's ability to speak Thai, we learned more about the group and how they make such delicate colours using natural dyes from their local environment. Thanks also to her ability to read Thai (albeit slowly), we also learned the Thai names of several dye materials new to us.

Each new word helps us communicate better with the Thai weavers from whom we buy textiles. (My Thai is still rudimentary but my ability to understand and speak grows slowly, but daily, as we travel.) Being able to communicate, even a little, with the weavers enriches our understanding of their traditions and practices. It also allows us to bring you more stories about the creation of these incredible fibre arts.

Nok Noi (aka Ellen)

#3: Prae Pan Group in Thailand

2009-01-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

In our last post we affirmed our desire to support the highly skilled women who continue their tradition of creating silk and cotton yarn, natural dyeing and hand weaving despite the challenges posed by globalized modernization and the current economic downturn.

A case in point was our recent visit to the Prae Pan Group in Khon Kaen, Thailand, which we first visited 4 years ago. They still produce beautiful weaving, still have an impressive inventory of finished pieces and still have an active storefront in Khon Kaen, which is Thailand's 4th largest city. However, despite 2 decades of success, this group is finding it increasingly difficult to stay afloat.

Khon Kaen, by the way, is one of our favorite Thai cities. There's a large park with a small lake in town that Ellen is happy to walk around every morning and a large number of tasty noodle shops and khaow mun gai stalls where we can have cheap and tasty meals. It appears that very few tourists visit Khon Kaen, which may help explain why most people there are extremely welcoming to us. However, this also means that there are very few tourists, foreign or Thai, visiting the Prae Pan shop. It's not surprising that sales are down.

The bulk of the people in Khon Kaen province are rice farmers who live outside the provincial capital. More and more often, their young people are moving to urban areas where they can experience urban life and modern trends. At the same time, many factories are opening in the rural provinces where there's a surplus of labourers accustomed to hard work and low wages. All of these reasons add up to a growing pessimism whether rural women's groups like Prae Pan are actually sustainable and whether younger women will have learned the necessary skills to continue the tradition before their mothers and grandmothers are no longer available to teach them.

Consequently, we've decided this year to focus our selection of Prae Pan's work on a traditional style of khit weaving (using supplementary wefts), which the group's board members tell us may not be available in the coming years. We've selected ancestral patterns with design qualities that transcend their original meanings so to be appreciated by those outside the culture which produced them. We've also chosen sizes and colours that are well-suited to decorate tables, chests and dressers. We hope you'll agree.

Pii Plaa (aka Alleson)

#2: The future of handweaving in Thailand

2009-01-04T21:24:00.000-08:00

[Photo: Alleson and Pii Yai -- who has been working in rural development for decades and who has been advising one of the weaving co-ops we have been working with for several years -- enjoying a walk in Loei province.]

One of our goals for this trip is to get a sense of where handweaving is going in Thailand. We've been discussing this with our Thai friends and some of the weavers we meet. The conversation is never a simple one as the topic is situated in the larger issue of industrialization and modernization in a 'globalized' world. And, of course, as elsewhere in the world, the global economic downturn is affecting people in Thailand.

An article in the Dec. 21, 2008 Bangkok Post (Thailand's biggest English-language daily newspaper) caught our attention and confirmed what our friends here have been telling us for some time. Entitled "Growing debt forcing rice farmers to put their farmlands up for sale," the article discussed how skyrocketing rice prices did not offset the rising costs of farming (higher production costs, including fertilizer, pesticides* and land rental costs) because most of the price rise went to millers, wholesalers and exporters.

At the same time, everyone in Thailand eats rice as their staple food, so any increase in the price of rice results in inflation across-the-board. So, almost everything has gone up in price -- except factory wages where, instead, there have been significant layoffs, especially in the auto (and related) industry.

The director-general of Thailand's Rice Department said that "in order to find a way out of their debts, many people have decided to sell their farmlands and leave the villages for the cities in search of jobs in the hope of finding a better future."

Most of the weaving groups we buy from are village-based groups, which means they primarily make their living by farming, usually farming rice.

The future of handweaving in Thailand is very much connected with these trends. Fewer and fewer women in the villages are continuing to weave. Some are leaving the villages for waged labour. Younger women are not continuing their foremothers' weaving traditions for a number of reasons, including a drive to modernization that values this work less. The cost of materials is rising, including cotton and silk yarns that must be bought from the market or from other groups. Thai customers are less interested in traditional weaving than before, and generally have less money to spend on it. So, while international markets become more important, village women are not any better suited to reach them, due to enduring limitations of cultural, technical and language skills.

How does this affect what TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles is doing? It means that we are more determined than before to support the women who continue to do this work. We are buying more of the traditional designs this year (such as the khit weaving, shown on the left and below, which are designs created on the loom by highly skilled and mature weavers who may not be able pass on those skills.) At the same time, we look for weaving that fits into our own cultural context (e.g., that we know our Canadian and U.S. customers will find useful as well as attractive.)

While we continue to build relationships with the groups we already know and buy from, we're also finding new groups and new designers so we can bring fresh work home with us. We plan to make these available through the special textile fairs that we organize, through the events that we're invited to speak at (check our website under "Services" for more information) and through our online shop.

We hope you will help us support Thai and Laotian weavers by buying their wonderful handwoven pieces when we bring them back with us!

Nok Noi & Pii Plaa

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* Note: We try to buy organically produced textiles as often as we can find them, so we support the weavers' attempts to keep their costs down and to lower their exposure -- and that of their environments -- to harmful chemicals.

#1: Our first month in Thailand

2009-01-04T20:57:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the Northeast of Thailand (also known as Isaan) !

We were able, after all, to arrive in Thailand by rerouting through Hong Kong and landing in Singapore. From there, we travelled overland to Malaysia, where we spent an interesting week on the island of Penang, while the Bangkok airport worked to resume normal operations. Finally, on Dec. 10, we arrived in Bangkok to find that life carried on as usual for most people regardless of the unstable political situation.

[Since then, Abhisit Vejjajivaa has been chosen to serve as the new Prime Minister by a coalition government, despite protests from those loyal to Taksin. He's the previous prime minister who has been out of the country since he was ousted 2 years ago and charged with corruption and tax evasion. The NGO people we talk to are hoping, along with most reople, that the country will now settle down to address the problems caused by both the world economic slow-down and a decreased number of international tourists.]

During the first weeks, our travels took us to the North where we met and made a number of purchases from groups that produce handwoven, naturally dyed cotton textiles. Our 2009 season will include more textiles for the home: cushion covers, tablecloths, table runners and placemats. We also found a new source for cotton scarves, perfect for everyday wear, including some lovely ones dyed with natural indigo.

In Chiang Mai (Thailand's 5th largest city), located in the North, we met 2 local designers: one who sews lovely jackets from handwoven cloth (some of it handspun, which means it was also locally grown and processed) and another who produces a very attractive line of stylish hemp handbags with leather straps, which we're certain will be popular.

We're excited to be able to support local designers and tailors/dressmakers/sewers who have taken the initiative to create their own designs. We recognize that, while the village group model may be well suited to traditional weavings, the added value that is created by those who have the vision and enterprise to create new products is an important part of local economic development.

Aside from doing some initial buying, we have been very fortunate to be able to discuss these types of issues with Thais. Over the (western) New Year's holiday we went 'upcountry' with some of our Thai friends. In between sightseeing in the mountains of Loei and eating (eating and more eating!) , we discussed daily life in Thailand, modernization, the future of hand-weaving, changes to village life and, of course, food!

We'll tell you more about all of these in future postings.

Happy New Year!

Nok Noi & Pii Plaa [the Thai nicknames for us: aka Ellen and Alleson]

Travelling first to Laos

2008-12-01T03:37:00.000-08:00

With the current political crisis in Thailand, we are even more dedicated to continuing our relationships with rural women's weaving groups there, who will be hard hit by the resultant economic fallout. But, until the situation becomes more stable in Thailand, we are happy to start our trip in Laos, visiting weavers and venturing into new areas of the country where some incredible weaving is done. Stay tuned later in December or early January for our first stories.

Off to Bangkok

2008-11-04T03:09:00.000-08:00

We'll arrive in Bangkok Dec. 1, 2008! Our 4-month travel plans in Thailand and Laos include:

follow-up visits to weaving groups and organizations with whom we already have relationships: Panmai Group, Prae Pan Group, Green Net Cooperative, Mulberries and more
fairs where we can buy directly from artisan weaving groups
a 3-week internship with the Pattanarak Foundation, learning first-hand from local, village experts about cotton production -- from raising organic cotton, natural dyeing and indigo dyeing to handweaving and discussions about marketing

Drop by again for updates on our travels as we continue to use fair trade principles to grow TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles and our relationships with artisan groups in Thailand and Laos. Join our e-mail list by clicking in the sign up box on the right and we'll e-mail you when we post to this blog.

Ellen/Nok Noi (my Thai/Lao nickname)

Thoughts on fair trade from Alleson

2008-04-25T09:07:00.000-07:00

We've been back in Canada one month now. We've had a booth at 2 local shows and are planning 2 large textile events in Halifax and Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia to coincide with World Fair Trade Weeks (May 1-15, 2008). We've had a chance to reflect and I want to share some of my thoughts with you about some of the challenges of this work.

Most challenging is the wide variety of producers, locations and conditions associated with the pieces. Classification or certification, whether for fair trade, organic or Canada Customs, always involves standardization; and the artisans we meet and the textiles we trade defy standardization.

There are so many steps involved in handmade textile products that a dozen or more farmers and craftspeople are usually involved in making a single item. Take, for example, a baby’s sunhat. There are a number of people involved with the production:

the farmer who grew the cotton, organically but without certification
the group of grandmothers who fluffed and spun the yarn by hand
their neighbour and or daughter who wove the cloth
the artist who designed the hat and made the pattern
the tailor who cut the cloth and sewed the machine stitching
the natural dyers who dyed the cloth for decoration
the embroiderers who made and assembled the appliqué detail

And, to make matters more complicated, these people don’t all live in the same province well enough village, few of them speak English nor know how to effectively market their work internationally and few are online.

So, first of all there are the logistical problems of all those people working together. Luckily we’ve met some incredibly connected and dedicated Thai community development workers who do knit these production “chains” together. With patience, flexibility and a lot of lead time, those challenges can and have been met.

But whether these complex production networks can be examined, analyzed and certified is another matter. Very likely their way of working doesn’t fit any of the existing models. Perhaps to do so, one would have to sacrifice the conditions and traditions that created the product.

Consequently, we prefer to meet the producers and, when possible, visit the villages where they live and work. That’s the best part of this work but also the most unpredictable.

We have sometimes travelled all day, introduced ourselves in our halting Thai and explained our intentions to incredulous villagers, who of course want us to buy their work, regardless of whether it meets our criteria. When it doesn’t, we usually buy a few pieces anyway to soften their disappointment and, more importantly, to avoid their loss of face, which in Southeast Asian cultures is something always to keep in mind.

We’ve also had crazy situations, like when our rented motorcycle, fully laden with us and our overflowing shopping bags, gasped to a halt as sunset approached. We were nowhere close to a bus, well enough a hotel, and we ended up hitching a ride in the back of a truck.

These challenges are worth overcoming though – especially as we begin to build stronger relationships both with the women artisans we buy from and with women here in Canada (and elsewhere) who also love and appreciate textiles like these and who like what we're doing. It's a good direction for us.

Alleson

Peace, women and Lao silk

2008-02-23T22:46:00.000-08:00

Laos, a small, impoverished and thinly populated country land-locked between China, Thailand, Vietnam and Burma, is renowned for its silk. In recent years, however, a flood of low-quality silk threads and finished weavings from China and Vietnam have overwhelmed the Lao marketplace, resulting in a mishmash of qualities of 'silk' textiles available in Laos and Thailand.

So we were excited to find the not-for-profit Lao Sericulture Co. -- a source of high quality, organic, naturally dyed silk textiles, sold under the name Mulberries.

In 2006, Mulberries was certified by IFAT, the global network of fair trade organizations, a designation earned for its fair trade and poverty alleviation practices.

We're equally excited that Lao Sericulture uses no chemicals anywhere in their cycle of textile production; they (and we) can rightly assert that their silk is 100% organic!

When we were in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, we had the great honour to meet with the founder of Lao Sericulture Co., Kommaly Chantavong, who was a nominee for "1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005." A quiet, dignified woman, Kommaly is well described on the Peacewomen Across the Globe website:

Kommaly was 11 years old when her village was destroyed by US bombers attacking the Ho Chi Minh Trail. She walked for a month to Vientiane, the capital, bringing with her silk weaving skills that her family has been engaged in for generations. “I learned to weave from my mother when I was six years old, and I loved it”, she recollects.

Kommaly studied nursing, but then she found the goal of her life: “I met many desperately poor families displaced from rural areas without any marketable skills,” she explains, “so I started to teach the women how to weave silk...Our goal is to strengthen the position of women by giving them a dependable income and thus improve the chances of their children,” says Kommaly with a gentle but radiant smile.

Lao Sericulture has a production and residential training facility on a farm in Xieng Khouang province, which employs 60 people who:
- raise mulberry trees and the animals that produce the manure to fertilize them;
- raise silkworms and produce silk threads;
- grow the materials they use to naturally dye the silk threads;
- and weave high quality textiles.

Understandably, more than 17 people might be involved in the production of 1 scarf!

Not all of Mulberries' producers are at the farm; more than 2,000 people benefit from their involvement. Lao Sericulture provides silkworm eggs to weavers in numerous villages in several provinces. Women in each village bring a different set of skills to the production cycle: some raise silkworms and produce threads, some are expert with dyes and others specialize in one of the many types of weaving evident in Mulberries' products.

Lao Sericulture also plays an important role in training: there are 40 looms at the farm where village women train free of charge for 3-12 months before returning to their villages to train other women. Because they work with villagers in different provinces, they are able to offer designs that are specialties of each region: ikat (mutmii) from the South, supplementary weft from the central region and discontinuous supplementary weft from the North. (This information is probably of most interest to the weavers among you!)

We bought dozens of 100% organic, naturally dyed scarves and shawls in deep magenta, soft amethyst, vibrant copper, subtle latte, buttery beeswax and more! We are delighted to bring these beautiful textiles to Canada, along with the story and the spirit of Lao Sericulture.

If you'd like to learn more about Kommaly and the 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize 2005 Campaign, visit the PeaceWomen Across the Globe site.

Ellen (Luk Nok)
and
Alleson (Pii Tem)

Panmai Group: silk art!

2008-02-03T06:07:00.000-08:00

Our next visit was to Panmai Group, another women's weaving group in Isaan (Northeast Thailand) that has been organized for almost 20 years. Like Prae Pan Group, it was started to help women earn income so they could stay in their villages, continue traditional work that they learned from their mothers and grandmothers, and supplement their income from rice farming.

Panmai has members in villages spread throughout 3 provinces in Northeast Thailand, close to the border of Cambodia: Roi Et, Surin and Si Saket. We arrived at their office tucked away in a small market town of Roi Et province and settled in for 3 days of work together.

Our goal: to learn what Panmai needs from us to be able to receive orders from us in Canada, and to help them build their capacity to handle international orders, such as ours, by learning how to ship to Canada. (Each country has its own requirements and we are their first Canadian wholesale customer.) Our training included how to fill in the appropriate forms needed by Canadian postal and customs authorities. We did this training, amidst much laughter and language exchanges, with the help of a new staff person who has been hired to work with international customers. At the same time, they taught us how to order in ways that make it most beneficial to the group: we learned the minimum and maximum numbers of scarves to order, for example, which will allow a weaver to most efficiently "warp" the loom (i.e., string the lengthwise threads onto the loom) so that she might make the ideal number of pieces.

We also learned more about the group and its work. We knew they were respected, even renowned, for both their subtle and dynamic natural dyeing of silk, but we also learned that:
- all the silk they use is hand-reeled in member villages (or in other villages in Surin province if Panmai members cannot produce enough at a particular time)
- all mulberry leaves fed to the silkworms are organic and all natural dye materials are organic, so all the Panmai silk is 100% organic!
- members (250 at present) weave 11 months of the year, but are unable to continue the work during the heaviest of the rainy season months
- about 100 members weave in silk and about 50 members raise silkworms and hand-reel the silk, a process called sericulture; they are hoping to expand their capacity to do sericulture in future
- an annual dividend is paid to all members

Most exciting was a new product that we developed with the help of staff and members of Panmai: silk squares for art quilters!

With their help and artistic advice, we developed an attractive package of silk squares in 4 colour combinations, each package containing 4 solid colours and 1 mutmii square (mutmii is a traditional technique involving tie-dying thread to create a beautiful pattern that appears during weaving). We hope that this new product -- which we describe as "100% SILK. 100% ART." -- will be perfect for art quilters who want to incorporate these unique, hand-reeled, naturally dyed, handwoven pieces of silk into their quilts.

Because quilting is not a traditional form of handwork in this part of Thailand, we initially had some trouble explaining what the squares were for. Following the adage that a "picture is worth a thousand words," we went online and introduced the staff to the work of 2 internationally known quilters from our area in Nova Scotia, Canada -- Laurie Swim and Valerie Hearder. The Thai staff members were fascinated by the quilts that we showed them, which we described as "painting with silk," as this was a new art form that they had never seen before.

We plan to return next year with reports on how these pieces of 'silk art' were received by art quilters in Canada, after their debut this June at the 2008 Quilt Canada conference to be held in St. John's, Newfoundland.

Although Panmai also creates beautiful handwoven cottons, our visit with them was a silk extravaganza! Our time together ended with the packing of several boxes of silk squares, scarves, shawls and fabric in the gray-blues of a flower called anchan, magentas and pinks from krang (an insect resin), greens from (lemongrass), oranges and golds from the wood of kanoon (jack fruit trees) and more.

It was an enriching visit for all of us, and we hope that introducing their art to Canada will be as well!

Ellen (Luk Nok)
Alleson (Pii Tem)

Eri silk: new in Thailand

2008-02-03T05:35:00.000-08:00

Thai silk is famous throughout the world for its beauty and texture. Most of this silk is created by a variety of silkworm that eats only mulberry leaves. Eri silk -- produced by the Eri silkworm, which feeds on different foods than the Mulberry silkworms -- has its origins in Assam province in India and is relatively new to Thailand. Eri silk combines the elegance of silk with the comfort of cotton and the warmth of wool. Eri silk can be spun evenly or unevenly into fine threads or coarse yarns, making it a perfect fibre to create interesting textures.

Eri silk was introduced in Thailand by researchers at Kasetsart University in Nakhon Prathom (in Central Thailand), but the Fai Gaem Mai (Cotton and Silk) Program of Chiang Mai University's Institute for Science and Technology Research and Development (IST) is largely responsible for helping spread Eri silk production to villages in the North and Central regions of the country.

The Eri silk project, one of a number of projects run by Fai Gaem Mai, involves several villages in four changwats (provinces). We were invited to visit Ban Panasawan, "Forest of Paradise," one village where all the steps of production take place: raising Eri silkworms, safeguarding cocoons, releasing pupae, boiling empty cocoons, fluffing, spinning, dyeing and weaving the yarn into beautiful textiles.

In Ban Panasawan, there are 20 households participating in the production of Eri silk:
- 25 women raise worms;
- many women are becoming adept at spinning silk yarn;
- group members together dye the spun yarns when required; and
- 4 women weave.

The women in the village already had Mulberry silk skills -- passed from mothers to daughters for generations -- including skills in natural dyeing, so it was a good fit for the Eri silk project. They continue to create Mulberry silk and now work with Eri silk to create a textile with a new and exciting future.

While Mulberry silkworms eat only mulberry leaves, Eri silkworms are content to munch on the byproduct of one of Thailand's most important agricultural products: cassava (also called tapioca). The production of the root, used principally as an edible starch, occupies more than 1.5 million hectares in Thailand. That leaves a lot of leaves for Eri silkworms, giving cassava farmers new opportunities to bring in additional income from the production of Eri silk textiles.

Residents of Ban Panasawan, like other villages chosen for this project, have been successfully growing cassava for many years. They have reached a level of production that is able to sustain most community members; this has reduced migration to urban areas. However, as cassava is a low value/high volume commodity, the additional employment and income to be derived from Eri silk production appeals to the many women who choose to join the group. Not needing to plant a special crop of multerry, they could use the cassava leaves to feed the hungry Eri silkworms, then top off their diet at the end of the growing cycle with castor leaves (used in some regions as the exclusive food for Eri silkworms). This helps the Eri silkworm produce a bigger cocoon, richer in silk content.

The Fai Gaem Mai project provides training on caring for Eri silkworms, coordinates the stages of production that often involves several villages and helps with marketing. Fai Gaem Mai is also working with international designers to bring a wider range of products and techniques to these village women. The objective is to interest a wider range of consumers, both within Thailand's urban centres and internationally. These days, daughters are attending school longer to reach higher educational levels, so a school program has begun to teach them about the history and cultural role of silk in Thai society, with the aim of interesting more young people to pursue these production skills.

The eggs for the project were initially provided by Kasetsart University, which does sericulture research, but now the entire cycle from eggs through to moths is undertaken in the village. We learned that:

1. Eri silkworms are larger (and uglier, in the opinion of many Thai women who raise Mulberry silkworms!).
2. They are hardier than Mulberry silkworms, and are easier and less expensive to raise.
3. The Eri cocoons are larger than the Mulberry cocoons and are white in colour, in contrast to the native Mulberry cocoons, which are bright yellow. This offers a white yarn for weaving and dyeing.
4. Like the native Mulberry silkworms, the Eri silkworms can produce generation after generation; this is in contrast to the hybrid and foreign varieties of Mulberry silkworms, which can only reproduce for 2 generations. This makes the Eri silkworms ideal for self-sufficiency, as they can reproduce for multiple generations.

We were taken to different homes in the village to observe the various stages of production. We learned that Eri silkworms have a 45-60 day cycle: the worm eats for 25 days, during which it goes through five stages of growth, molting at the end of each stage, where it sheds its skin; it then spins its cocoon, made up of triangular protein segments, where it spends 15 days, transforming from a worm into a pupa before it emerges from the cocoon as a moth. After 3 days the moth will lays eggs, which, after 10 days, hatch into worms -- and the process begins all over again.

The Eri cocoon is quite different in another way from the Mulberry cocoon. The Mulberry silkworm cocoon completely surrounds the silkworm. It is made up of up to 300 metres of continuous protein filament that is "reeled" into a long thread. In contrast, the Eri silkworm makes its cocoon with short segments of protein, so it must be spun, like cotton or wool, into a long yarn, ready for dyeing and weaving. The Mulberry cocoon must be boiled to remove its filament; the Eri cocoon, open at one end, can be left intact so the moth can emerge through its open end, without damaging the cocoon, to lay more eggs.

Because the pupa (which later develops into the egg-laying moth) is not killed to remove its cocoon, Eri silk is sometimes referred to as "peace silk" or "vegan silk." In this village, as in many others, only some of the pupae are left to develop into moths; the rest are easily removed from the cocoon, and only later are boiled or fried for food. As well as providing an important source of protein to supplement villagers' diets, removing the pupae leaves a cleaner cocoon, made up of 100% silk, as none of the dry chrysalis and final stage of the worm's molted skin remain inside the cocoon. For those who prefer silk that is not produced by silkworms that must be killed in order to create the silk, Eri silk is an excellent choice.

Last but not least, the leaves upon which the worms eat, live and excrete are an important part of the sustainable cycle of production. Worm excrement is used as a fertilizer for vegetable gardens, and the waste leaves and stems of cassava are collected and composted, also for village gardens.

During our visit, we were able to observe all parts of this production process.

Eri silk spinning was of special interest to us because up until this visit we had only observed the production of hand-reeled Mulberry silk. The spinning machines introduced by Fai Gaem Mai for Eri silk production are made for this project by one manufacturer in Lamphun province in Thailand, but are based on a design developed in India by an appropriate technology NGO. The appropriate technology design uses bicycle rims and other common machine parts that are easy to replace when worn, and is pedal powered -- avoiding the need for expensive electricity, as well as leaving both hands free for spinning.

Currently, spinning is done in only one village, which limits the production of yarn. During our visit, five women were gathered at spinning wheels in the home of the village's project trainer. The women spun together and talked about ideas for the work -- a creative time for them, which they greatly enjoy. They told us that they want to further develop their spinning techniques so that they can spin yarns with varying thicknesses and textures.

Right now, the average production of yarn per person is about 200 grams per day; 1 kg of yarn can make 6-8 finished pieces (50 x 180 cm). The project is working to address this bottleneck in the production process.

As with the other groups we visited, participants in this project only use natural dyes. They plant dye materials and also collect them wild from the field. They asked us to remind our customers in Canada that natural colours will vary with location, season and even weather, so colours will always be unique!

The day we visited, these women were dyeing with tamarind bark. They told us that they've been taught by extension workers to remove only a section of bark so they don't kill the tree. The bark has been boiled for one hour before the silk is immersed, which is then boiled for about 30 minutes. One portion is rinsed in soda ash water to make the colour brighter (resulting in a shrimp paste pink), and the other in alum to make it more beige coloured. We were told that had they used iron phosphate as a mordant, the colour would have changed to gray.

Before returning to the van we arrived in, we had the opportunity to purchase a few finished scarves and table-runners as samples. We have since made an order for scarves and table runners, made from a mix of Eri and Mulberry silk, for sale in Canada -- most probably the first Thai Eri silk in our country!

Alleson and Ellen (Luk Nok)

Prae Pan Group: carrying on tradition

2008-01-12T06:12:00.000-08:00

At the end of December 2007, we visited Prae Pan Group in the Thailand's Northeast. Two long-standing board members joined us at the Khon Kaen shop and office, assisting with translation, deepening our understanding of the group and helping us train staff to fill orders and ship to Canada, building the group's marketing capacity.

Last year we had the good fortune (and great help of one of their board members who we met again this year) to visit four of the villages where Prae Pan members live and work. Those of you who have attended one of our slide presentations will remember the photos I took of natural dyeing experiments and weaving at traditional looms.

[Note: These photos are part of a 45-minute presentation that tells the story of our visits to women's weaving co-ops in Northeast Thailand. Learn about natural dyeing, the cycle of silk production, fair trade and the benefits of membership for village women. Contact us at ask@tammachat.com if you are interested in this presentation for your group.]

This year we presented a gift of these photos to the group, as well as a hardcover book to tell the visual story of their work (with additional English descriptions of each activity written by Alleson.) Our idea was that this book can be used by the group to give Prae Pan customers a glimpse into the work behind each piece -- especially helpful if they can't speak Thai. As well, we presented them with a 6 minute self-running digital slideshow called Social Fabric which the group can also use to tell their story. Both promotional aids were received with enthusiasm!

A few of the things we learned on this visit:

1. The 18-year-old group has revolving credit pools, pension and medical benefits and an educational fund.
2. The number of members has varied over this period; currently there are about 120 members living in 7 villages in the province.
3. Although the group began with help from the Appropriate Technology Association of Thailand, it met its goal of being self-sufficient more than 10 years ago. This member-run community business now owns its own shop, and staffs it full-time, in the main city in the province. It is able to provide its members a regular income, sufficient for daily consumption, that supplements most members' principal income from rice farming.
4. Staff and members are villagers who have learned a range of new skills and gained confidence over the years through their involvement with the group. They are very proud of their accomplishments.
5. A village-based co-operative brings benefits to weavers' families and other non-members in the communities.
6. One of the biggest challenges the group faces is how to interest the next generation in carrying on the traditions and skills of their mothers. It's important to the leaders of the group to inspire the new generation to preserve and build on artistic, creative cultural traditions and create new ones. By buying from them, we hope to contribute to the sustainability of this group so that younger women will know they can make money at this work and will want to continue it.

We were invited to return to Khon Kaen in early January to attend a monthly committee meeting. We eagerly agreed and joined the 18-person committee for a delicious, Isaan breakfast feast, then we presented our business, the Prae Pan book and digital slideshow CD to board members and village representatives, again to an enthusiastic reception.

As well, we spoke about our offer to help Prae Pan (as volunteers) develop a new, more marketing-focused website with help from American and Thai community development students at Khon Kaen University. On the following day, we attended an initial meeting at KKU, along with 2 Prae Pan staff members and 1 board member, to explore how we can work together on this project. What started a year ago as an offer from us has now moved into its next phase.

And before we left, we placed a large silk order, shipped cotton fabric and table linens home to Canada, and chose samples for a possible new TAMMACHAT customer. Our fair trade relationship with Prae Pan continues to grow.

Ellen/Luk Nok

Bangkok fair

2008-01-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

The week before Christmas, we headed for the OTOP fair at a huge trade and convention centre on the outskirts of Bangkok. OTOP -- One Tambon, One Product -- was a program started by a previous government many years ago. It gives star ratings to products that range from foods, to handicrafts to superb textiles, designating products considered outstanding in each district.

OTOP fairs feature products from all over the country, so we thought a visit to the largest one would be a good place to find more weaving groups that use natural dyes with whom we might form ongoing fair trade relationships. We were especially interested in village groups from the Northeast, which has an ancestral artistic tradition of silkworm cultivation, elaborate mutmii patterning and natural indigo dyeing.

We spent 3 very long days at the fair; each evening we returned overwhelmed, laden with bags bursting with organic cottons and sumptuous silks, both in finished pieces as well as yardage for the many sewers who requested "more fabric this time." We also responded to Nova Scotians' apparent preference for blues by selecting a large range cotton products dyed with natural indigo.

Highlights and lessons from the OTOP fair:

1. NATURAL COLOURS:
At the OTOP fair, and since, we have been able to source a wide variety of naturally dyed textiles. We have found brown dyes so deep that they appear black (made from ebony fruit), pale pinks to deep magentas created with lac (an insect resin), and greens from the leaves of lemongrass. As well as these wearable pieces of art, we have expanded our lines to include cotton table runners and tablecloths. We have also included many pieces in the natural creams and butter yellows of undyed, hand-reeled silk.

2. INDIGO:
The palette of soft greens to rich blues created by natural indigo proved so popular at our fall sale in Mahone Bay that we were happy to find some groups that specialize in this form of natural dyeing. Dyeing with natural indigo is a difficult skill to master because mordants cannot be used to make it adhere to the fabric. Instead, a chemical reaction must occur when the fermenting indigo leaf mixture meets the air which causes the dye to bond to the fabric -- if done properly. To create deeper and deeper shades, fabric is dyed repeatedly or "overdyed." This results in some of the dye washing out on the first few washings, but if the dyer uses proper techniques, the indigo dye will not continue to shed upon repeated washings. To check for this, we carefully felt each piece to see if our fingers turned blue!

We bought indigo fabric -- plain and with mutmii tie-dyed patterns; organic whenever we could find it; and handspun, which gives a lovely texture to the cloth. We also bought dozens of scarves and shawls, mostly 100% cotton (but some with rayon warp threads, which make the piece particularly soft), in various shades of indigo blue, soft greens (also from indigo) and a pale apricot colour made from mango. Designs include dynamic, contemporary patterns as well as traditional ones.

We bought several lovely natural colour, 100% organic cotton scarves from a project in the Northeast that creates income for women living along the Lao border. The foundation that facilitates this project has involved a number of communities that each specialize in one part of the production. They seek to preserve their local culture and to preserve traditions in dyeing and weaving that are at risk of being lost as the younger generation migrates to urban centres to find work. We hope to visit them later this trip.

3. ORGANIC COTTON:
Another group that we found works in a cooler area of Thailand between the North and Northeast. A designer who has been working with this group for 18 years has helped villages develop skills of growing white, tan and brown cotton organically. The nubbly scarves we bought are rich in an array of browns (made from praduu, a bark of Burmese ebony), with accents of natural tan cotton and blues from hom, a leaf that produces a blue similar to indigo. We plan, on a future trip, to accept the invitation to visit the Weaving Natural Dye Group to learn more about their work.

While we were able to find a number of producers working with organic cotton, particularly along the cooler banks of the Mekong River, we learned that there is more demand for organic cotton weaving than can be supplied at this time. There is a small, but growing, market within Thailand for organic cotton. As well, there is a Japanese market and many European Union countries also want cotton that is grown organically.

We think Canadians, with our growing interest in responsible consumption, will be interested in these eco-textiles that are produced in ways that protect both the health of the producer and their environment.

4. BATIK:
We were pleased also to find a natural dyeing and weaving group from the South of Thailand that specializes in natural dyes using batik and tie dyeing of 100% cotton. After meeting Dim and Ari (who kindly picked a large grasshopper off my shoulder where it appeared from nowhere!), we are hoping in future to add a visit to this community to learn more about their dyeing and weaving work.

The OTOP fair was one place for us to meet village-based weaving groups, but we found mostly for-profit businesses that buy from village weavers. Since attending this fair, we've met a number of women who have worked for decades with weaving groups, such as Prae Pan Group and Panmai (see the Artisans page on our site) -- they have generously helped put us in touch with a number of other groups with whom we can build a fair trade relationship. But we're also discovering that it's difficult to apply the fair trade principles that have been developed for commodities like coffee, sugar and chocolate to the complex production of textiles. More on this in a future blog entry.

Ellen/Luk Nok

Chiang Mai's wealth of weaving

2007-12-30T22:12:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year's Eve! We've been here less than a month and have already bought more than 600 pieces! We're focussing this trip on deepening our relationships with the 2 main groups that we have bought naturally dyed silk and cotton textiles from on past trips: Prae Pan Group in Khon Kaen province and Panmai in Surin, Si Saket and Roi Et provinces -- all in Isaan, the Northeast of Thailand. As well, we are seeking out new producer groups with whom we could establish fair trade relationships. (See our page on Fair Trade in the main part of our website for more info on this.) This has proven to be an interesting task. Before we left Canada, we did as much research as possible to help us plan our trip. One stop that we knew would be important for us was to go to the OTOP CITY fair in mid-December in a huge convention/trade centre in Bangkok.

First, let me tell you more about our experiences in Chiang Mai. As well as meeting Fai Gaem Mai (see the first post), we learned about a group of weavers whose families were dealing with HIV/AIDS. We went to find them at the annual Gift Fair 2007 in Chiang Mai. This large event was filled with food, crafts and textiles. The textiles were grouped in several large, open tent areas, perhaps 200 hundred stalls in all. After half a day of wandering (and buying from a couple of other vendors, including a woman with a family business that produces lovely batik hemp table runners), we finally found the Information Desk, as our efforts to find this particular group of weavers were not working. In spite of Alleson's ability to speak some Thai, we were not able to locate them by name or phone number on the pages-long list of vendors we found at the Information Desk. This proved to be the beginning of challenges we continue to face when trying to find specific groups. We finally left the Gift Fair with some , but none from the group we were looking for.Our next search was to the weekly Chiang Mai Sunday Walking Market, a very fun, long-standing outdoor market held each Sunday afternoon and on into the evening. It covers blocks and blocks, and people sell anything from textiles to T-shirts, crafts to paintings. Some are made by local artisans; much has been bought elsewhere. We were looking for a woman we met last year who, with her family, weaves 100% cotton, naturally dyed scarves. The scarves we purchased some from her last year sold quickly so we wanted to find her and talk more with her about who makes the scarves.

The Klong Jing weaving group is a village-based family business, made up of 20 extended family members. They weave from December to February when not busy with rice farming, their main occupation, and again in August during rainy season. They use only natural dyes made from barks and leaves, and weave in 100% cotton (which is a much cheaper investment for the weaver than silk). It takes a day to weave a table runner, but 3-4 loose weave scarves can be woven in a day. We bought many of these scarves, lovely for casual wearing -- they'll look great with jeans!Does this group of weavers fit the standard definition of "fair trade" groups with whom we want to trade? Are we able to learn enough about the ways they set payment for the work to those who produce it and under what conditions? What can we learn about how they work in ways that protect their health and their local environments? We are discovering that there is no single way that weavers organize themselves. Unlike coffee farmers, who have been in the forefront of the fair trade movement, organizing themselves in a farmer-run, co-operative model, we are encountering many types of groups in Thailand.

We have been fortunate to meet a number of women who are part of a strong network of rural women's development workers. They are helping us learn which groups most benefit the members and therefore with which we want to develop long-term trading relationships. As we continue to build our network, we will be working more often with these women to help us make these decisions. We feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with these highly skilled, dedicated and fun women.

Our next stop in Chiang Mai was to visit a beautiful centre for the Foundation for the Promotion of Supplementary Occupations and Techniques (known as SUPPORT). From the Mahidol University website:

"SUPPORT was established in 1976 under Her Majesty's royal patronage, partly through funds supplied by Her Majesty and partly with public donations. SUPPORT's primary objective is to set up women's groups and provide rural Thai women with equipment, materials, and training in cottage industries. The latter include some 18 traditional crafts which Her Majesty felt were worthy of being promoted on both local and world markets..."Although we weren't buying from a weaving co-op directly, we liked the approach and bought many naturally dyed, loosely woven, cotton scarves, along with a wonderful array of reverse applique pieces. I am particularly drawn to the tiny stitches and interesting, often geometric shapes used in this work. Although not naturally dyed, I know that many quilters and sewers will appreciate and find uses for these beautiful pieces.

Delving deeper into the opportunities Chiang Mai has to offer, we were delighted to discover and attend His Majesty the King's Doi Kham Royal Projects Fair, where we bought many scarves produced by village groups in the North of Thailand. Again, we didn't buy directly from the weavers, but as we weren't able to visit these weavers directly, we wanted to support their work and found some lovely textiles. The King's Royal Projects have helped hilltribe groups in the North replace opium crops with other income-producing crops and crafts. You can learn more here, if you're interested: http://www.royalprojectthailand.com/general/english/index.html.

Our next stop: 3 days at the OTOP CITY fair in Bangkok. Alleson will post her entry about the Eri silk group visit soon and we'll take you to Khon Kaen on our 3-day visit and training with Prae Pan Group. Drop by again for these and other postings.

Ellen/Luk Nok