The thread hangs in a thick twisted bundle of various colors.

 
The Karen people have been weaving beautiful fabric for hundreds of years. They cultivate cotton and from the harvest they spin their own thread.  To create the many vibrant colors on display in any Karen village, the women explore the nearby jungles and forests for a variety of things with which to dye the thread.

 
Only the women weave; the girls learning the skill beginning at about age seven.  A skilled adult can weave up to four feet of material per hour and an expert will weave from 1 to 3 hours a day.  However, weaving is no one’s primary job in Karen society.  It is one of many tasks that fall to the women along with working in the fields, washing, preparing meals, and tending to the children.

 
Operating the loom requires a high level of coordination and agility, manual dexterity using both hands and feet, and a strong back!  Hundreds of individual threads — the warp — are stretched out horizontally side-by-side over the length of the loom.  There are about 50 threads per every inch of cloth width and the widest material possible is approximately one meter (39 inches).  These threads run through a “harness” of vertical strings which keep them separated and also serve to support a mechanism that allows the horizontal threads to be spread apart vertically through the operation of foot pedals.

Horizontal threads are spread apart vertically through the operation of foot pedals.

 
The weft — the thread that is to be woven — hangs from the top frame of the loom in a thick twisted bundle of various colors and is fastened by a single thread to a large wooden shuttle.  The shuttle is pointed on both ends to facilitate passage through the vertically spread threads and is hollowed out to house a quill upon which a quantity of thread is wrapped.  As the shuttle passes back and forth through the warp, the thread feeds from the quill out of a hole in the shuttle.  As the weaver passes the shuttle through the warp from one hand to the other, she must simultaneously reach with her free hand to pull back the reed to batten the thread tight against the material that has already been woven.  To the uninitiated, it is nothing short of dizzying to watch new material being created with blinding speed.

The shuttle is pointed to ease passage through the spread threads.

 
But what is truly remarkable is the beautiful cloth that emerges from the old-fashioned loom.  Each weaver is an artist, deciding the pattern, colors, and width of her material.  To get a consistent pattern, she must continuously count the number of shuttle passages so that she can stop and change thread color at the appropriate place in the material.  Once enough material has been woven it is sewn together to make shirts, skirts, pants, and handbags.  A top weaver can make a handbag from individual threads to finished product — weaving, cutting, sewing — in 30 minutes.  An elaborate man’s shirt will take about 16 hours of work.

 
ZOE Children’s Homes is dedicated to ensuring that our children know their culture.  We encourage our house parents and staff to pass down to the children the customs, history and traditions of their people.

A top weaver can make a handbag from scratch in 30 minutes.