In Lamalera, Lembata, two years might pass from cotton harvest to the final pass of the weft. In 1998, Threads of Life helped twelve Lamalera villagers found Cinta Budaya cooperative. Since then, the local economy has shifted from barter to cash, and the group has struggled to develop the necessary business skills. Threads of Life’s long-term commitment provides the financial security that supports this slow learning process.

Sumbanese men wear their hinggi to traditional ceremonies, one folded across the shoulder, the other tied around the waist. Hinggi designs identify each man’s rank in the social order, place him in the proper clan, and help his ancestors to recognize him in the next world. The qualities associated with each motif on a pair of hinggi transfer over to the man who wears them. These motifs are arranged in as many as eleven bands of varying width. After death, a man’s body is shrouded with his hinggi. The central flower motif on this hinggi is called walamangata, with iyan or fish at the head and foot.

A partially completed tiara design from Sumba. Crafting these patterns is a painstaking process; the weaver has to plan every element of the design in advance, and insert as many as several hundred heddle sticks into the unwoven threads on the loom, to help her raise just the right warps for each pass of the weft.

The island of Sumba suffers from some of Indonesia’s most intractable poverty, with entrenched social stratification, poor education and poorer soils exacerbating each other as causes. For weavers and concerned community leaders, the textile arts and related traditions can express both the best of the ancestral culture and open access for poor weavers to economic development.

The master basket weaver of Maumere

In much of the country, the dry season brings most agricultural activity to a halt. Women fill the gap with cotton: they harvest, clean, spin, dye, and weave it until they are needed in the fields once more. Many families subsist on the produce of their gardens and barter with their neighbors. Cotton textiles provide the cash income to cover taxes, school fees, and medical expenses.

Earth Colours Workshop – a 6-day workshop exploring Indonesia’s natural dye traditions with Threads of Life: Designed as both an introduction for beginners or an extended practice for established practitioners, the workshop will build towards a personal creative batik and natural dye project on the third day. It will start with a day of hands-on work creating shades of colour with indigenous natural dyes harvested from the dye garden, before the second day focusses on developing batik skills through a series of simple exercises using canting (wax pen), cap (stamp) and brush; these two days establish the foundation for the third day of personal creative exploration. Read more: http://events.eventzilla.net/e/earth-colours-workshop--a-6day-workshop-exploring-indonesias-natural-dye-traditions-with-threads-of-life-2138946334

For thousands of years, traders and immigrants have fostered strong cultural ties between the island of Java and the great civilizations of east and west Asia. Large Chinese communities have existed on Java’s northern coast for centuries, and have given a strong Chinese flavor to the Javanese arts in those cities. In Pekalongan, for example, the large colorful designs on local batik reveal a powerful leaning towards Chinese tastes. In other areas, the influence is more subtle. This sayut-so called for the long twined fringes at either end-was made in eastern Java, some distance inland from the northern coast, in an area not notable for its Chinese community. The motif, called Lok Chan, drawn directly from Ming-period Chinese models, has been adapted in design and color to the artistic preferences of the Javanese.

Want to do a 7-day workshop on ikat, natural dyes and backstrap loom weaving? Right this way, please! When: Sun, 13 May 2018, 2:00 PM - Sat, 19 May 2018, 12:00 PM Everything else: http://events.eventzilla.net/e/weaving-week--a-7day-workshop-on-ikat-natural-dyes-and-backstrap-loom-weaving-2138916094

Nine workshops to explore the best of Indonesian natural dye, weaving, batik and more! Spread the word and book your spots now! All the info you need for each workshop can be found here: http://www.eventzilla.net/user/threadsoflife

Nearly every traditional Balinese ritual involves sacred textiles called bebali, which purify sacred spaces and offer protection from illness and malevolent spirits.

Love this explanation of our plant mordant by @tourisia ・・・ I've got some questions from my natural dyer friends about what Symplocos is and how to get one. • It's a magical plant that is alum-rich, hence it's perfect as a mordant and for centuries traditional weavers in Indonesia (and some other communities elsewhere) have used #Symplocos to mordant their yarn prior to ikat textile-making and dyeing. • Recently I've been exploring with several methods and ingredients in my #botanicalodyssey by slowly shifting from industrial and metallic salts to plant-based ones -- though I still use iron water for particular projects. Soymilk, black tea, gall nut, and symplocos are some of them, whilst I encourage my practice to use metals mainly in the form of dye vessels and tools which also work as meta-mordant i.e. alum and copper dye pots, also rusty tins, copper and brass pipes for ecoprinting. • Since I live in Bali (Indonesia), I source the Symplocos directly from @threadsoflifebali / Bebali Foundation -- the organization behind the Plant Mordant Project, whose gallery is just 10 minutes away from my home-studio in Ubud. • For those living in America and Europe, they have retail partners in both continents. You can peruse more about Symplocos and the full recipes on their website www.plantmordant.org. By co-creating with Symplocos, not only we can be kinder to our health and the environment, but also support mother artisans, community livelihood, and Indonesia's rainforest! ❤ • Hope this #fridye post helps -- and I do hope to maintain insightful posts on conscious dyeing more on my instafeed. Happy Friday! ☺🌿🌻