Creating Fabrics: A Look behind the Showroom
February, 2025
Creating Fabrics: A Look Behind the Showroom
This morning I’m in Sop Lan, a Karen village in the western highlands, 200 kilometers from Chiang Mai. For the past twenty years we’ve woven silk scarves in this village - nothing else; but today we’re warping a new textile, and to accommodate the new textile width the loom needs new adjustments. It’s work that neither I, nor the weavers at the center, have ever done before on our own. We need a weaving expert, who knows the ins and outs of these hand-crafted looms, and fortunately I already know one: Sakapaw.
One of the first stages of setting up a loom - threading through the heddles
Years ago, in the late ‘80’s, Sakapaw joined me to work as a weaving instructor at our weaving center. She spent the following seventeen years working with me in the frontier villages of Sop Moei, teaching both Karen women and men to weave textiles on up-right looms. Later she worked in the same capacity in northern Laos. Recently I learned that she was back in Thailand, and taking a chance, I asked her if she’d be willing to spend a week helping out with our group, in Sop Lan. In particular, I wanted to revive a textile we had long discontinued, and I wanted Sakapaw to do the job since it’s a textile which she herself designed for us, probably thirty years ago.
We dubbed Sakapaw’s creation “The Blanket Fabric” - simply because the first thing I did with it was to sew two pieces of it together, making a bedspread. The textile had popped up during a period when I was absent from work. I remember returning to the weaving center, staring at a loom warped with a beautiful gradation of colours: blues merging into reds, then turning to beige and cream.
Sakapaw seemed apologetic when I asked who had done this - and why.
‘I was just using up odds and ends - all those leftover spools of cotton from other projects.” Beauty, inspired by economy.
The colourful gradation of the "Blanket" fabric designed by Sakapaw
The textile turned out to be a hit. Back in the nineties we wove textiles for garments, and the new “Blanket Fabric” made interesting jackets, shirts and dresses. For the next ten years there was always somebody weaving this textile. The day came, however, when we moved away from producing textiles for garments, and with this shift we no longer wove it.
This, then, is the project I wanted Sakapaw to re-start. Not, this time, to weave fabric for garments. I wanted a “Blanket” edition narrowed down for shawls, cushion covers and handbags. The shawls would be gently woven with raw kibiso silk, creating a soft, textured fabric finished by long cotton fringes. The cushions would be woven firmly, with two-ply cotton; and the handbag fabric would be pounded tightly with three-ply cottons for durability.
We spent three days in Sop Lan, working first to install new heddles onto the loom, after which the warping commenced. Following this we threaded the heddles. The work looks easy - one person feeding a single thread to a heddle - the other person pulling it through the eye of the heddle - but it takes strict concentration: each thread must align with the correct heddle - and then to the beater. Failure to be precise ends in crossed threads; chaos.
On the final day, Sakapaw starts a trial run. None of the large, wooden looms we work with are made in a factory - they are constructed using hand-sawn lumber. This means that each loom comes with its own character and temperament. The looms need to be coaxed into operating smoothly. Sakapaw knows this, and before she’s woven a couple of centimeters she’s already pushing one post to the right, shortening a rope here, shifting the heddles back a bit.
Finally, it appears that the loom has been tamed. Harnessed. Ready to roll.
Weaving the "Blanket" fabric for shawls, cushions and handbags
“We’re going to be using two kinds of yarns for the weft,” explains Sakapaw. “Here’s the silk, for the throws.” She inserts a bobbin of raw, white silk into the shuttle. Weaves four or five rows, the uneven nature of the silk creating texture, plain to see. Some really big blobs of silk appear, here and there, like flecks of cloud in a blue sky.
“Shouldn’t we remove those fluffy bits first?” asks Pawlomo, who will be taking over the job of weaving after Sakapaw leaves. She’s worried that the fabric won’t look professional, machine-made.
Sakapaw looks at her. “No,” she says. “These uneven bits create the beauty of this fabric.”
The weaver rolls her eyes.
Sakapaw then demonstrates weaving with two-ply and three-ply cotton yarns; two ply for cushion covers, three ply for handbags. Pawlomo observes, and then says,
“If you wind the bobbins with two strands and three strands of cotton, they’re going to come off the bobbin unevenly,” she says.
“Sure,” replies Sakapaw. “If you use the bobbin winder, that will happen. But it won’t if you do the winding by hand.”
More rolling of the eyes.
Sakapaw weaves a bit more silk, then a small width of cotton. They’re just samples, a kind of preview, but not until Pawlomo has woven much more will I be able to see if there are any adjustments to be made. We leave Sop Lan, drive the five hours along the spine of the mountain ridge, then down into the Chiang Mai valley.
The following weekend I receive a small box from Sop Lan, containing one cotton/silk throw, and lengths of yardage to be made into cushion covers, and handbags. The throw looks great, the long fringes luxurious. The yardage for the cushion covers - spot on. I unwrap a roll of tightly woven, three-ply cotton fabric for the handbags; rich, sturdy and reminiscent of that “blanket textile” Sakapaw created all those years ago.
Products from the Colour Gradation Collection are available now in our web-shop and the Chiang Mai shop.