. The Traditional Weaving Art in Lembata Island

Process of Weaving                     Process of Weaving Steps by steps on Production of Traditional Lembata Textiles The annual variety of cotton is grown throughout Eastern Indonesia . Women harvest it by hand; gin and clean it to remove seeds and dirt and than card it to fluff it up. They will than spin it into tread by hand using a simple but highly effective gravity spindle. Lady picking up cotton from the field   Elderly lady separating cotton pips. The hand spun tread is wound into measured skeins and wrapped over an open wooden frame. These threads form the wrap or lengthways tread of the final cloth. Finally the treads are divided according to the kind of motif and then tidying. After tide the motif the treads are move from the frame for dying. These processes often take months to complete. NB; Its takes from four days up to one week to soaked the treads into indigo or Morinda (mengkudu).Then the threads are separated from the liquid and with carefully hang out to dry.   Making the mengkudu liquid   Mother and daughter grounding mengkudu         Making Indigo liquid   Two ladies hung-up the treads with liquid The dying process also takes several months, which is Indigo ( indigofera ). Shrubs (for blue and black colour ), only grow in the rain season. While the read and dark brown colour is from the root of the Morinda tree or Mustard fruit tree known as mengkudu in Indonesia . Other colours as green and yellow are from bean leaves and turmeric. The dye and dry process take weeks often months to get the right colours)     Separate the motif   Ready to weave   The threads are then carefully set up on the back strap tension loom. A breast beam, end beam, shed roll, string heddle and various guide sticks are incorporated into the wrap threads. This process usually takes a day to complete by two people. With the loom set up the weaver then concentrate on the task of weaving the wrap and weft treads into a tightly–woven fabric. Cloths which are worn daily may take three to four months to make and it will then be cut, joined and hand stitched into a tube. While those for ceremonial purposes may take up to 12 months to make, because much more care is taken with the motifs and the weaving, and these remain uncut.   NB ; the ceremonial cloths have bigger motif and usually in three panel, while the two panel cloths are for every day worn, have smaller scale of motif and can be add some of colourful machine threads.