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A story cloth is a flat piece of cloth with stitching that depicts a theme and often has a geometric border around it. The overall shapes of the story cloths are primarily rectangles or squares. Story cloths are pictorial because they represent Hmong figures, animals, places, and shapes that tell a story with pictures. The most well-known form of modern Hmong embroidery is the story cloth. There are distinctive characteristics of clothing within the five groups of Hmong people.
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Twin Cities salon run by Hmong American women came up with design for Suni Lee's eye-catching nails - Chicago Tribune
Twin Cities salon run by Hmong American women came up with design for Suni Lee's eye-catching nails.
Posted: Fri, 06 Aug 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Next, the fibers are pounded to soften them, and then the women hand-twisted them into long threads to be woven into coarse cloths. In peaceful times, the New Year celebration was a special event for everyone to dress up in their finest embroidered clothes to be seen by the public. The celebration was a time for courtship and a place to attract marriage partners. Young brides would spend time making new clothes for everyday wear and New Year celebration clothes, because it is believed that new clothes bring good luck, good health, and prosperity to the family. Furthermore, most girls sew their own clothes for the Hmong New Year’s celebration.
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Batik is a resist-dyeing technique in which hot wax is applied to cloth to create a pattern. The cloth is then dyed, typically using a single color (traditionally indigo), and the wax is removed. The waxed areas of the cloth resist the dye and the desired pattern remains. Here is a selection of four-star and five-star reviews from customers who were delighted with the products they found in this category.
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Hmong people living in the US and in developed countries around the world may not spend time making traditional paj ntaub and pictorial story cloths like they once did, because they have jobs and educational access that have expanded their economic opportunities. Meanwhile, Hmong people in Southeast Asia and China still embroider in order to make a living from their crafts, but they have learned to adapt due to access of materials, machines, and markets. Hemp is most commonly used for funeral garments in the contemporary era. Hmong motifs are copied, and replicated into machine-made patterns with Hmong designs and motifs. These copied patterns are made into pleated skirts, cuffs, and the placket fronts of jackets, as well as accessories.
The motifs and symbols represent everything from nature to architecture, and one can only imagine the intimate relationship between the Hmong and the land they lived on when it is featured on elaborate and arduous embroidery. Many of the people in the diaspora may not have the same kind of physical closeness to the land as they once did, but these symbols continue to persist in the form of tattoos and other mediums. In traditional Hmong culture, the women prepare traditional funeral textiles adorned with Paj Ntaub for their close relatives such as their parents, in-laws, and spouse.
Hmong women used paj ntaub to make colorful intricate designs for their clothing. Clothes are important to the Hmong people because they identify groups and clans based on the design, style, and accessories. In Thailand, story cloths were sold at open markets to Western aid workers or sent to relatives in other countries (USA, France, Australia, etc). Story cloths can invite the viewer to empathize and appreciate the experiences of the Hmong people.
From handmade pieces to vintage treasures ready to be loved again, Etsy is the global marketplace for unique and creative goods. It’s also home to a whole host of one-of-a-kind items made with love and extraordinary care. While many of the items on Etsy are handmade, you’ll also find craft supplies, digital items, and more. The Hmong Cultural Center and the Hmong Archives would like to thank the following people who contributed their time to support this project. He wrote narratives for the selected pieces to be featured on the Hmong Embroidery website.
The Blue/Green Hmong women are known for their batik pleated skirts that are dyed black or indigo blue. White Hmong women do not dye their pleated skirts but leave them in their natural “white” color. Meanwhile, Striped Hmong women wear a jacket with blue or white stripes around their black sleeves. Even though each group of Hmong have their own unique clothing items, they share common articles in their attire. Formal Hmong clothes are worn at celebrations like the New Year, weddings, funerals, naming ceremonies, and other important ritual events. In the refugee camps, everyone had more time than they once did in Laos, so story cloths were not exclusively sewn by Hmong women and girls, but men also helped.
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Story cloths emerged out of necessity to bring income to support Hmong families in the refugee camps after surviving the Secret War. Through this new art form, Hmong women, children, and men transformed Hmong oral traditions into visual narratives by telling their stories on cloths. This new style of embroidery offered Hmong artists a chance to share their creativity and record their desolate reality living in the refugee camps, while expressing their yearning for home and loved ones left behind in Laos. A common story shared by many elders say that paj ntaub (flower cloth) are the remnants of the Hmong language.
To counter the patchy and broken history of the Hmong culture lost without a written language, Hmong refugees created what are called story cloths in order to record and express the rich, devastating, and expansive history and culture of the Hmong people. These Story Cloths brought change in textile styles, ranging several square feet. The Hmong incorporated symbols and figures in their cloths which represented specific events, people, and history in narrative form.
This is typically done well in advance of their relatives' death and are gifted to them as a token of filial endearment. There are complex embroidery techniques used by Hmong women to make clothes and other decorative items. The main techniques are appliqué, reverse appliqué, batik, chain stitch, cross stitch, embroidery, and story cloth stitchery. The table below gives a brief description of what each technique is and examples for reference. Traditionally, these flower cloths were applied to regalia worn during courtship festivals, baby-carriers, and men’s collars as decoration. Overtime, Flower Cloths transformed into the primary way of communicating Hmong Culture and history between and among the people and over generations.
Hmong women coded onto clothing their language in order to disguise their stories from their oppressors. Common design motifs found in traditional Hmong embroidery are the elephant’s foot, snails, mountains, house, dragon tail, cucumber seed, heart, pinwheel, star, landscape, diamond, flower, and more. For instance, the three patterns on the skirt were sewn to represent the three main bodies of water (Yellow River or Dej Dag, Yangtze River, and Dongting Lake or Pas Dej Toob Theeb) the Hmong crossed to escape persecution. In the Thai refugee camps, Hmong people began to sell their Flower Cloths across seas, producing items like bedspreads and purses which were then shipped worldwide. The men in the camp created illustrations for the folktales which represented the traumatic events of their exodus.
Cotton and synthetic fabrics are now preferred over hemp as the latter is heavy and difficult to find. In the past, paj ntaub served as a form of decoration for Hmong women to create clothes and preserve history. In the present, paj ntaub has undergone tremendous changes as designs and patterns get repurposed or reimagined to meet the creative demand of modernization where group identity is less important. The emphasis is on creative expression to see who can wear the most unique styles that come from different groups’ clothing (Laotian, Thai, Chinese, American) and mixing it with Hmong paj ntaub motifs. Other challenges like assimilation (people internalizing dominant culture’s values, behaviors, and beliefs as their own) present obstacles for paj ntaub to exist in its authentic form. The ease of access to machinery and cheap machine-made prints threatens the survival of paj ntaub.
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