Lahu Shi Women's Dress

It was on a long trek down a dusty jungle path on Three Hilltribes Mountain that we met these delightful Lahu Shi tribespeople. The fascinating trek began on the upper part of the mountain with the Akha tribe at the top, the Lahu tribe in the middle and the Karen village in the valley. Lahu are often called "Long-ears" because of the large silver tubes that the women wear in stretched earlobes. We found that even though they are 'on display' a great deal of time in this popular tourist destination, the Lahu were incredibly friendly and more ready to sit and chat and make music than they were to sell their wares.
These particular Lahu were of the Lahu Shi subgroup which has it's own style of traiditonal clothing very different from that of the other Lahu subgroups. Most noticeable is the predominance of red stripes in their adornment and the large number of small silver 'buttons' sewn to the jackets.

In the picture below are two Lahu women. The one to the left is dressed in unmarried woman's fashion while the one on the right is attired in a married woman's costume. While not profound, the differences are easily identifiable.

Traditional unmarried women's clothing consists of a loose, long sleeved jacket adorned with appliqued strips of cloth and silver, a woven tube-like sarong and a turban. The jacket is black with many stripes of colored fabric appliqued onto it at the hems. In between the stripes are sometimes rows of small silver 'buttons' which are generally applied in triangular designs. Larger silver bells can be seen on either side of the front of the jacket and it is closed with very large silver disc-buttons at center front. Notice the small row of adornment at the shoulder seam. The sarong is also mostly black with areas of brightly colored stripes woven in at the hips and a smaller section at the hem. It is simply a tube which is folded over itself to make a wide pleat in front, then tucked into a string or other belt at the waist which holds it in place. An unmarried woman's turban is elaborately decorated with silver button designs in vertical stripes, seperated by rows of applique. The turban's decoration is only for the last few feet which is all that shows after it has been wrapped around the head.

Above is a close-up of a section of silver-decorated turban. The lines of color that alternate with the rows of silver appear to be woven into the main cloth of the turban rather than embroidered. The long ends of the turban fringe have been left to drape down over the side after being tucked in the top. The older Lahu woman in the picture below has chosen to wear a modern scunci rather than a traditional turban. As always the interesting mix of traditional alongside the whimsical modern is rather delightful! Though she does not wear the turban, her jewelry is the epitome of tradition. Long silver tubes through stretched ear lobes, a hollow silver torc and long strands of beads are all considered necessary.

Married women's dress consists of the jacket, sarong and turban but the adornment of the jacket and turban are a little different. There is less color showing in general, particularly absent are the strips of ornamentation at the shoulder seams. Over top of the rows of colorful stripes, the married woman's jacket has an incredible amount of silver coins and bells sewn to it in rows and triangles. Cowrie shells are also sometimes used as decoration as the picture above shows. It is also easy to see the use of the silver sequin rather than 'buttons'. The turban, in stark conrast, has barely any silver on it at all and is a much plainer version of the unmarried woman's turban. However, the sarong seems to be no different between the married and unmarried women. Unlike the jacket, the stripes of color in the sarong are woven into the fabric and not added on with applique.

It is important to note that although in the past the use of silver was ubiquitous, it is just as often likely to be aluminum these days.

Rabari Skirt Border

This beautifully embroidered ghaghara border we found in a small Rabari village just north of Bhuj, Gujarat. It is a common practice to find other uses for the time-consuming embroidery when the rest of the garment has become unusable for one reason or another. In this case I do not know anything about the rest of the garment other than the fact of it being one of the heavy, gathered skirts that are generally reserved for brides. Whether this border was once embroidered onto a contiguous piece of cloth or sewn onto an existing garment, I do not know.

The ground fabric for the artful embroidery is black cotton and the embroidery threads are also cotton. Square and triangular mirrors abound in the motifs which are Kachhi Rabari designs.

At the top of the border are curving designs done in square chain stitch, called ambo, which is one type of mango tree motif. In the above picture some fading of the threads can be seen in the blue stitches on the left. The interior of the diamonds that make up the center of the ambo design are filled with a loose herringbone stitch.

Triangular mirrors form the bottom of the mango tree design. The stitching used to hold these mirrors in place on the fabric is very intricate with the stitches stretching out to the orange chain stitch in long lines at the bottom corners while being forced into tiny spaces along the lenth of the triangle borders. Below is a close-up of the small designs between each of the ambo. A diamond of small chain stitches above a very tightly woven example of interlaced stitching.Next comes a border of the popti (parrot-like) design. The yellow square chain stitches are contiguous lines that are embroidered over the tops of one another when they meet. An elongated chain stitch is used for the center fill.

In this shot of the back of the embroidery can be seen the jumbled maze created by the stitches on the inside fabric. It is easy to detect the different designs despite the messiness.Underneath the line of popti is a very intricate border, bavaliyo - thorny acacia, in between two lines of white square chain makoliyo borders. The bavaliyo is perhaps one of my favorite Rabari embroidery designs because I love the mixture of stitches. A square mirror, a line of herringbone stitching, an interlace stitch square, another line of herringbone stitching and so on, all encased in the ever-present square chain borders. In this example the mirror is sewn on by two different color threads which is intriguing. Did the embroiderer run out of the original color or just get bored with one color? Another popti line completes the border just above the bright red bias tape hem.

While the hem is machine sewn to the fabric on the front with a contrasting white thread, it is hand finished on the back with a bright green thread.

Judy Frater's book "Threads of Identity" was of invaluable help as reference for the stitches used, names and meanings of the embroidery motifs.

A small enigma

In the same tiny seaside village of round huts where we found the baby mobile, we found this. I am still not absolutely certain, but I believe it to be a hindhoni - a cushion worn on the head for carrying objects around. However, I could be quite mistaken. There is a paradox in what we were told by our guide and the research that I have been able to do after our trip. We were told that this object and another similar to it were children's bracelets. I loved that explanation :) This piece is certainly small enough to be a decoration for a child, it will not even pretend to go over my hand. At the same time, in all the books and pictures that I have looked through, and in all the pictures that my husband and I took - nowhere are there Rabari children wearing bracelets of this kind. There are many instances of Rabari girls and also Harijan children wearing bangles and either silver or gold bracelets, but nothing so brightly beaded!

It is possible that this is actually from another tribe or from the mainstream Gujarati community rather than being Rabari, despite the fact that we bought it in a Rabari village. Unfortunately, I don't know enough to be able to say with certainty! At the moment my opinion remains that this is a ceremonial carry ring for use with the copper pots that women carry on their heads when welcoming guests to the village. Or perhaps for resting a pot on a table or the ground?
The construction of this beaded ring began with the beads being threaded on a string which was then oversewn through the red fabric and into the stuffing. Inside the red fabric (as you can see in the top picture where I was so curious that I had to open up part of it...) was a roll of plain fabric. It is rolled so tightly that it is extremely hard and made the object much heavier than one expects. The inside roll is sewn together to meet in a circle and then the red fabric is whip stitched in place to cover it.
The tassels are made with 3 baby cowrie shells and cotton threads of many different colors. The circumference is: 3.5 inches across to the outsides.
The thickness is: .75 inches

Yao Women's Pants

We visited a small Iu Mien Yao village in Thailand on the road from Doi Tung to Doi Mae Salong. The ladies that we met were delightful, including an elderly grannie who is probably the toughest person that I have ever met. As we purchased the trousers from her there was a long period of negotiation and bargaining in which she produced the most incredible scowls when we offered too low a price. Once the price was settled upon she came back to her normal smiling self and there were no hard feelings, it was all part of the 'game' of the bargain. I will do another post on her entire costume at a later date. She is the one that embroidered the trousers above and informed us during the bargaining process that it took her 6 months to finish them.

Yao costume varies quite a bit depending on sub-branches, groups and 'nationality' but the beautifully embroidered pants are common to almost all Yao. "All Yao Mien and Mun women wear trousers except for one Mien sub-branch, the Yao Tien from Northern Vietnam, and one Mun sub group in Hainan, China."pg. 102 of ' The Yao Mien and Mun of ...' by Jess G. Pourrett

The loose trousers remind me a bit of the way that some Middle Eastern pants are constructed with the large triangular crotch piece. The cloth is indigo-dyed cotton and the embroidery threads are also cotton. The leg panels are embroidered first, then sewn to the rest of the pants with a loose running stitch. Typical of Thai Iu Mien Yao trousers this pair has the mandatory weave stitch pattern at the bottom of the legs and then three large panels of designs going up almost to the waist.

Here you can see the stitching on the inside seams.

Amazingly the embroidery is done from the back of the fabric, a common theme in South Asian tribal embroidery. The bottoms of the legs are embroidered first in the extremely important bands of symbols that are employed in every pair of Yao trousers, anywhere from 2 to 5 rows, using weave stitch.

A close-up of the three bands of weave stitching. Originally the weave stitches would have been done in silk thread but lately cotton thread is much more widely used. Following the Iu Mien Yoa tradition, grid stitch has been used for the smaller bands of symbols within these rows.

The inside of the weave-stitch bands, also showing the hemmed cuff.

A close-up view of some of the designs of the next two rows of large colorful embroidery done with grid stitch.

The transition between the 2nd and 3rd bands of embroidery with a smaller geometric design between.


Embroidery at the very tops of the thighs. You can see the different tones of the indigo dye in the very top where the waist band has been sewn to the leg panel.

Final picture of the back side of a stitched panel where it has been sewn to the crotch fabric.

Harijan bag

This beautiful bag caught my eye as an old harijan woman displayed it in her wares under a huge shady tree in the middle of her dusty village. The stitches are very fine, but the two sides of the bag appear to have been embroidered by two different people. The peacock's body and tail are different as are the shapes of the smaller birds (parrots?). On one side the stitching hides almost all of the drawings but drawings on the other side are easily seen all over the place. The thing that is most interesting is the words. It is Gujarati. One side has nearly perfect textbook letters while the other has squiggly and hard to read letters, as though the embroiderer didn't truly understand what they were stitching.

The well-formed Gujarati letters shown above and the rough ones are below.

The entire bag is handstitched and has a lining that the embroidery is stitched through so that the back of the stitching can be seen on the inside of the bag. The triangles were sewn with the seams and then a very loose running stitch was used to stitch the outsides of the seams. A zipper is hand sewn in the top and a garish, modern machine-made band was used for the strap, again handsewn to the bag.

A shot of the interior of the bag with the stitching through the lining fabric.

A very fine chain stitch is the main embroidery stitch used to create and decorate the motifs. All the motifs are then outlined with backstitch in white. The Gujarati text is also stitched with chain stitch. The mirrors are worked with cretan stitch.Here is a horrible picture of the lady who sold the bag with the bag lying in front. I apologize for the quality of the picture, this was a few years ago with a not-nice camera and a very bad photographer (me).

Baby Toy

In a tiny Rabari village of round houses on the coast of Gujarat we purchased this baby toy. It is perhaps supposed to be a parrot, though that is just a guess based on other triangular type motifs that are labeled as parrots in some of my research books. Typical of Rabari "stuffed" objects, it is very stout and heavy. The stuffing is tightly rolled fabric sewn into the desired shape then covered with the decorative outer layer. We were informed by our guide, and the gestures of the Rabari woman who sold it to us, that it was a baby toy similar to a mobile.

The stitches:

The yellow lines are Chain Stitch.

The white squares are Back Stitch.

Yellow and orange square and rectangles are in Satin Stitch.

The mirrors are held on with an incredibly tight Cretan stitch and surrounded by white Running stitches. Two of the mirror on the top of the triangle have cut through the stitches on one or both sides.

The white zigzag holds the triangle together down both sides and tiny tassles of orange and yellow have been sewn to all three corners.