New creations from Prae Pan weaving co-op

Later in January than usual, we're happy to finally arrive at Prae Pan.

Fon, this weaving co-operative's shop manager, returned from maternity leave in December with her newborn son, Pai, who seems to be growing as fast as his name (Bamboo) would predict! No surprise that he (and Fon's breastfeeding) have become a special part of the fabric of life at the co-op's shop: another example how women can shape organizations to best suit their own needs.

Alleson, Pai, Fon and Mae Ouan at Prae Pan's shop

The co-op's Khon Kaen location in Northeast Thailand (known as Isaan) serves as a retail shop, office, meeting space and warehouse for textiles woven by members in 7 surrounding villages. This community business glows with the pride of self-sufficiency that has been a core value of the co-op for over 20 years.

Inside we're excited to find loads of new hemp fabric in a range of beautiful earth tones -- Prae Pan's specialty -- so, of course, we order more hemp tote bags. We designed this bag last year and found it was popular as a knitting tote.

TAMMACHAT hemp tote bag

some of the new tote bag fabrics

We're also excited to find a new design on the shop's ready-to-wear rack. Ellen tries on a pair of these unique culottes and loves them immediately! Comfortable, loose and easy to wear, they come with choices of 2 pocket designs. We carefully choose cotton, hemp and silk fabrics for the body of the pants, then in consultation with Fon and Mae Ouan, we choose contrasting mudmee (ikat) fabrics for accent details.

Ellen sports a pair of cute culottes!

Apparently choosing fabrics works up an appetite! At mid-day, mats are rolled out on the shop's gleaming wooden floors, Pai is put in his hammock and we 4 sit down for another delicious lunch. The rice is Mae Ouan's own. Afterwards dishes are cleared, mats are rolled up and Ellen lays down on the floor for a short rest. ("You ate too much sticky rice so now you want to sleep!" Mae Ouan chides,  in Thai of course.)

Every visit provides us more language lessons and more teachings about natural dyes. We ask Mae Ouan, the resident natural dye expert, to tell us more about krang, the "mother" of pink dyes:

• The colours are stronger when the insect resin (known as "stick lac" in English) is fresh.
• Krang can be collected from the trees on which the insect lives anytime -- except rainy season.
• The resin can be collected after the insect has gone through its cycle and flies away.
• In former times, most natural dyers raised their own krang (is "raised" the right word when you're dealing with insects?!); the colours were stronger, as strong as chemical colours because it was fresh; now few do this work.
• Recently, the price has increased 6 times so pink silks will be more expensive than before.

Alleson helps Mae Ouan fold organic silk fabric dyed with rosewood

More local dye wisdom:

• Colours are stronger in this season because the plants are not as saturated as in rainy season.
• The shade of grey (or grey-green) produced by ebony fruit depends on how mature the fruit is and whether it's fresh or dried.
• The leaf of a local vine, baie beuak, yields delicate shades from silvery grey to sky blue: "You don't want the water too warm or it changes the colour." If it's hot, you get a grey-green instead. Mae Ouan cultivates a planting of this that she originally got from a friend in Mukdahan province. She says, "it gives a more beautiful colour,"  so she has shared cuttings from this plant with other Prae Pan members.

fresh ebony fruit

hemp fabric (on the left) dyed with ebony

After this break that has fed our stomachs and our minds, it's back to designing! Over the next several days we look and learn, think and choose, joke and eat. Alleson shows an unexpected fondness for waltzing Pai around the shop, while Ellen probes Mae Ouan for her traditional knowledge and practices her Thai with Fon.

We order bags in almost every colour and size. Bags with zips, bags with drawstrings, bags with dinosaurs and elephants! We re-order bags that we designed 3 years ago, the Prae Pan signature shoulder pouch, and a new design -- a drawstring bag, perfect for smaller knitting projects such as socks, mittens or a hat. This year's version -- improved with feedback from local knitting shops in Nova Scotia -- will be available in the spring.

prototype knitting project bag

Last but not least, we immerse ourselves in the beauty of silks. In their glass-fronted cupboard, we find a small, treasure trove of organic, hand-reeled village silks. We unfold metres of a deep, ruddy rosewood, and smaller amounts of silvery greens and blues, all of which we will bring home with us for Quilt Canada 2012 in Halifax. (We're happy to be a "Special Friend" of Quilt Canada 2012; you can find us in the Merchant Mall, May 30-June 2 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.)

We also choose 28 beautifully unique scarves for our spring shows but find very few of our favourite Prae Pan scarf pattern, lai bpit, which we've named "Tendrils." We check on silk yarn availability (lots!) and order 8 each of 2 of our best selling colour choices -- a krang magenta and a baie beuak mint blue, both on an undyed warp.

Tendrils scarf with ebony fruit dyed weft

After 4 days of visits, we are sorry to say goodbye but thrilled to leave Prae Pan's shop with a true sign of our closeness: Mae Ouan and Fon each gives us a kilo of rice -- this year's harvest -- from their families' rice fields, another sign of our deepening fair trade relationship.

As we leave, Mae Ouan is also saying goodbye to Pai, who is now old enough to leave his mother and return to the village to be looked after during the week by Fon's husband and mother.

We look forward to next year's visit. Khit thung ("thinking of you").

Ellen and Alleson

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

[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

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.”

#11: Prae Pan Group: Back to Our Roots

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)