Tuesday, October 4, 2011 - Ikat weaving

This morning we had a later start to our day so I was able to stroll around the Pertiwi Resort and Spa in Ubud, Bali.  I am staying near the front of the resort, so was surprised to find a beautiful ravine and creek running through it.  The grounds are really up and down!!

One of the resort rooms overlooking a steep ravine.   (I know it doesn't look that steep, but believe me it is!!)  The creek burbles over the rocks below.  What a beautiful place to sit a read a good book!

Perhaps the ravine shows better here.  You can see above where the black screens are strung up high.  This is to shade the next layer up of rooms from the direct heat.  You can see how steep the incline must be if the next row of rooms is that high up so quickly!

Every morning one woman goes around through the resort giving offerings and leaving them on the various alters around the resort.  (People say that Balinese people must really think their God is blind if they put up so many colourful offerings, but the Muslims must think their God is deaf, as they call to worship so loudly!)  She allowed me to take her picture and then I thanked her with a tube of lipstick for which she was delighted.

William Ingram joined us again today and we broke into three groups and drove in taxis through more rice fields towards the north of the island.

We arrived in Klung Kung and checked out the fabric market.  So far I have been disappointed in the fabric, as it isn't sold on bolts.  Really it all seems to be sarongs and blankets.  It is beautiful, but not meant for quilting.

For lunch we had the Balinese version of a picnic.  Rice with a variety of toppings, vegies, meat, tofu, etc. all wrapped up in banana leaves as the container.  It was delicious.

Picnic lunch.

After lunch we walked through the Ikat weaving factory.  First we saw the girls using floor looms to create 7 foot lengths of cloths.  (The girls in the photos do look VERY young, but they really are in their late teens and 20s.  The joy of being so tiny is that you always look young!)

Up close look of the loom at work.  On the left is the completed material.  Towards the right, before and after the wooden post, are the warp threads that the material will continue to be built on.  I really liked these particular warp threads as they had a variegated look to them that enhanced the overall look of the fabric.

In another area of this small weaving workshop is where the threads that are used on the looms are prepared.

In the above picture a man is tying the weft threads (that the loom workers pass back and forth on the spindle) to prepare them for dying.  This thread is what creates the pattern as mentioned in yesterdays blog.  He ties the various sections with coloured plastic twine (looks like colour raffia, but is plastic to resist dye.)  These pieces of colourful twine also help the person tying to see the pattern being created.  Next the thread is taken to be dyed.

Here the threads are being dyed.  As you can see they are not being immersed in vats of dye, rather they are being dyed by 'painting' the dye on with two notched sticks that are used to pick up some dye from a pot and then rub the threads front and back to ensure that paint is evenly distributed over the entire thread bundle.

We stopped at another small local weaving cooperative that specializes in sacred textiles.  The women who organizes the weavers is the daughter of the local hindu priest.  She has access to sacred teachings and has studied the symbols in sacred textiles and is teaching young weavers at a local high school.  Here some of the weavers got together so we could see them work.  They do not normally work in a garage on cement floor like this, they would usually work at home.  The looms, although big are surprisingly portable.

These looms are called back looms.  As you can see the weaver has a bar behind her back in which to regulate the tension of the threads on the loom.  In the above picture, the weaver has already done the left half of the sacred cloth.  It is folded on the frame to her left for us to see what she is making.  Weavers would typically weave about 12 inches in a day.  She is now creating the second half of the cloth.   The two pieces will be joined in the middle to make a very wide and long rectangular cloth that will be used in Hindu ceremonies.  The design is incredibly complicated and will sell to a temple or Balinese extended family for a lot more money than the public market cloth that we saw the floor weavers making earlier in the morning.

The weaving teacher, through William who interpreted for us, told us about the sacred textiles that she is teaching to her students.  She has written and book and the book launch is at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival that takes place this weekend.

These sacred cloths are all woven on the dyed pink silk thread that can be seen with colourful cotton threads making the designs.  Each design and colour used is symbolic.

A close up of our wonderful hostess and one of her sacred cloth examples.

At the end of our lecture/discussion, we were invited to join in some refreshments.  Bali coffee is ground into a fine powder and put in a cup with boiling water on it.  It is very good, but rather strong and has a lot of grit in the bottom.