Weaving and Dyeing in Laos

During the summer holidays, my sisters and I went on a day course at Houey Hong Vientiane, to have a go at natural dyeing and traditional weaving. This is something I have always been interested in and thought that it support some of my teaching in terms of soft technology.

In the dyeing session, I chose to use indigo and brown onion as my main pigments. I have since used this experience to get students in Dressmart to think about the differences between natural and synthetic dyes, in terms of the efficiency of the process, the durability of the colour and their environmental impacts.

In the dyeing process we also looked at creating pattern with a binding technique, which prevented the dye getting in to certain areas. On a village tour in Sa Pa, Vietnam, we also learnt about the resist technique 'batik' which is a way of drawing designs using melted wax which maintains the materials original colour when dyeing.

During the weaving workshop, we learnt about how the foot peddles flipped the alternate warp strands, allowing you to use a shuttle. We also embedded patterns based on pre-selected strands that could be raised up and parted with a supporting thread. The videos visually show this better than I could explain, but I do use the word 'risen', instead of 'raised'.. oops.

Again, in the module Dressmart, my students saw these videos and were able to see the labour required to create a length of material, which has an impact on the time it takes, which also affects the cost of clothing. They went on to compare this type of traditional weaving with modern machinery and techniques, and were then able to identify key point that define 'technology'.

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