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

Panmai, Part 2: Natural dyes -– pinks and purples

During our January visit to Panmai's shop, we also chose more than 3 dozen silk scarves, concentrating on a range of reds and purples to round out our displays in 2012. Panmai weaving co-operative is known for its luscious colours: deep golds, brilliant reds, regal purples and deep ebonies. Silk slurps up dyes better than most fibres, especially when using natural dyes, and Panmai doesn't skimp on the concentrations of their dye baths. Curious about how the variations within a hue are made, I set aside 4 scarves to ask how their colours were achieved.

Mali, the group's shop manager, knows her natural dyes well. Krang, a dye known as "lac" or "stick lac" in English, is made with the help of a small insect. The Laccifer Lacca beetle is put on a branch of the Rain Tree (Samanea Saman) where it creates a resin which can be cut from the branch after the insect develops and flies away. This wart-like growth, deep brown in colour, is the central ingredient in many of the pinks, reds and purples found in Asian textiles, especially silks. Its appearance – in its raw form – belies the beauty of the colours it will yield when master dyers apply their skills to it.

krang (stick lac), ready to be prepared for the dye pot

Some pinks and purples created by Panmai from natural dyes

1. Violet (scarf #1 below): After immersing in a concentrated dye bath of krang, the silk yarns are  washed in water from a particular well in one village. While the salty tasting water is not good to drink, it transforms the usual magenta of krang into a clear, violet-purple.
2. Orchid (scarf #2): Underground water from the same special well is used along with krang and wood from the Sappan tree (caesalpinia sappan) to create this orchid purple with a hint of pale brown.
3. Heliotrope (scarf #3): Here the dye bath was super-saturated with 12 kg of krang to colour 2 kg of silk yarns.  
4. Magenta pink (scarf #4): Only 2 kg of krang are used to dye 2 kg of silk yarn but Sappan wood was also added to the dye bath.

4 tones of purple and pink from krang and sappan wood

On this trip we have been told by more than one group that the price of krang has risen sharply this year. This is especially significant if the groups' members can not harvest enough for themselves and must buy it from others. Some groups are experimenting with using more sappan wood and other local dye stuffs to achieve pinks, reds and purples.

This is a glimpse into the complexity of making and using natural dyes. Each dyeing yields slightly different colours, depending on the time of year – even the week when dye materials are collected and processed – and depending on the artistry and skills of the dyer. The water used, the mordants used to set the dyes, water temperature and mineral content, the amount of dye materials to silk threads – all work in a seemingly magical way to bring forth colours to dye for.

We realize how fortunate we have been to receive such detailed information about many of the dyes traditionally used in Southeast Asia. In the coming year we hope to collect much of this onto one page of our website for easier reference.

In the meantime, we'll be working to get these and other fabulous new items back to Canada for you to see.

Ellen

Panmai, Part 1: Long-term relationships are the heart of Fair Trade

While the standards stipulated by the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) guide our business practices, they also highlight the heart in our work. Nowhere is this more evident than in our annual visits to the artisan groups that create our products: our time together personifies the WFTO commitment to maintain "long term relationships based on solidarity, trust and mutual respect." A case in point is our relationship with  the weaving co-operative Panmai Group.

We first met Panmai in 2003. As often happens in our work, we were introduced to them by members of another co-op. The familial network of weaving groups in Thailand and Laos, particularly those established more than 2 decades ago, is deep and wide. Like the babies we see in Thailand, we are passed from the embrace of 1 family member to another, making us wonder whether or when we might stand on our own!

Last month when we arrived at the offices of Panmai, Mali and Ung jumped up to greet us warmly. We left the glare of the sun-baked street, entered the cool shade of their shop and exchanged hugs. With us was our good friend Pii Yai, a volunteer board member of Prae Pan weaving co-operative, who had been pleased to give us a drive to this small market town in Roi-Et, Thailand.

Pii Yai, Alleson, Mali and Ung in Panmai's shop

Mali, whose name means "jasmine," has worked with Panmai for more than 20 years. Ung, whose demeanour reflects the stillness referred to by her name, is a more recent staff member with 10 years service to the group. Between them, they coordinate the production of orders, maintain inventory records, keep the accounts and do all the marketing. This includes attending craft fairs and staffing their only retail shop, which also serves as the offices and warehouse for the group, whose members live scattered amongst villages in Roi-Et and the 2 neighbouring provinces of Surin and Sisaket.

After our greetings, we pore over the inventory on hand – piles and piles (!!!) of organically created silk scarves are safeguarded in glass-fronted, hardwood cabinets. While we're already familiar with most of Panmai's designs, we're always keen to see new designs and, especially, to develop new ones together. This too is one of the tenets of Fair Trade: to develop new products and new markets with the aim of increasing the income of marginalized small producers.

Indeed, we have planned to discuss a new product on this trip. We pull out a sample of a travel-sized jewellery pouch that has been made for generations in East Asia: 8 small pockets clustered around a central well that is secured into a lovely blossom by a drawstring. It's perfect for safe, easy and mobile access to rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces. When I first saw this blossom pouch, I immediately thought of how lovely it would be in Panmai's signature organic silk.

We explore the dark cupboards, hunting for the perfect colours. We are delighted to find an iridescent pink "shot" with gold – its warp yarns, dyed deep pink with stick lac, are enhanced with a golden weft (crossing yarns) dyed with organic coconut husks.  It is a perfect jewel for anyone's jewels!

handwoven organic silk

Ellen and I then choose an undyed organic silk for the lining, but Mali and Ung advise us that the contrast is too stark, so we reconsider and settle instead on another pink silk "shot" with undyed yarns, resulting in an overall soft pink.

Next, we need a price and an estimate of the making time. Ung makes a call to Jong (whose name remarkably means "clear, diligent, perfect work"). She's not a member of the co-op but has worked with the group for over 20 years as their sewer. We met her on a previous visit when we developed our Silk Squares for quilters and other fibre artists. (See our blog post of Feb. 3, 2008.) Before we thought it possible, Jong arrives on a motorbike from her village nearby.

A team effort in designing the new jewellry pouch

While Mali and I measure the sample pouch we have brought, Ellen goes online to search for layouts to get the most number of circles (the basis of this design) out of a given piece of fabric. Instead, she finds a vague (not vogue!) pattern for the pouch itself. Together, we briefly examine the pattern on our small screen and then Jong disappears upstairs with some silk remnants that Mali has already dug out.

TAMMACHAT's new Travel Jewellry Pouch - prototype

An hour later, Jong emerges with a lovely prototype of the travel jewellery pouch! The making allows us to approve the design as well as allowing Jong to accurately estimate her labour time and cost. Mali adds the cost of the silk fabrics and guesstimates the satin drawstring cost. Ung adds a few baht for managing the project.

We have just witnessed how an experienced and effective production team at Panmai operates. With their combined 50 years of experience, no accountants or computer modeling were needed yet we're all satisfied that a fair price has been arrived at.

These will be mailed to us in Chiang Mai in late February, in time to bring them with us in our luggage to Canada in late March – a truly co-operative effort.

Alleson

New from TAMMACHAT: Sweatshop-free Clothing

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.

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.

#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)