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I’ve already confessed my blanket obsession to you so let me now tell you about my secret fabric stash. I don’t sew — although I have made quilts for both my kids just so I’d have an excuse to buy fabric — but I love texture. So I was immediately drawn to the gorgeous wares from TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles. Ellen Agger and Alleson Kase launched the fair trade company in 2007 to empower and support the women of rural Thailand and Laos who handweave these textiles. The partners make regular trips to these countries to visit the artisans and get to know them better. Ellen is proud to introduce you to these talented weavers on her travel blog and right here:

As we drive into Nawn Thoong village in Thailand’s northeast province of Khon Kaen, Pii Yai is excited. She has served for many years on the board of directors of Prae Pan Group, a women’s weaving co-operative in Thailand’s northeast, whose staff set up our visits today to three villages where members live and work.

We gather across the street at the house of Mae Pit, a long-time Prae Pan member. She and the four other members sit on a mat next to the house, protected from the glaring sun. All in their late 50s, these are the village’s silk weavers. Like most of Prae Pan’s members, they are farmers who fit weaving around their farming chores and caring for their children, grandchildren and elders. Weaving brings in much needed income which is used to send their children to trade school or university, for health care and to improve their lives in the village.

By belonging to the co-op they are paid for their work as soon as they deliver it to the group’s shop in Khon Kaen city. Members are proud that the co-op owns this shop, reflecting the group’s goal of being self-sufficient.

Co-op membership gives members the chance to work with customers like us, who pay 50% in advance for orders. It also gives them a market for their weaving well beyond what they would otherwise be able to reach as individuals.

We talk to the women gathered today about passing on the skills they learned from their mothers. Now their daughters are going off to earn their livings in the cities or on to further schooling. These skills are at risk of being lost, we’re told again and again on visits like these.

Sometimes younger women do return to their village when their children are small, preferring a quieter life where they have family support networks. “When I was young,” says one of the women, “I went away to work in a factory. Then I came back to my village. At home, you’re free. I can farm and I’m happier.”

After choosing samples of silk yarns in some of the colours they can produce in this village, we thank the women, jump in Pii Yai’s truck and arrive a short time later in Nom Thoom. We stop at the house of Mae Nung who is feeding organic mulberry leaves to heritage silkworms in baskets her husband has woven. “Raising silkworms is like raising babies,” she says. The resulting silk yarns, painstakingly reeled by hand, are produced organically, protecting both the women’s health and their local environment.

In neighbouring Suk Som Boon, Mae Nung practices the full circle of producing silk. She grows the mulberry bushes to feed the silkworms, hand reels and twists silk yarns, dyes them with natural dyes that she has grown or gathered in the wild, and weaves. It’s time- consuming work, taking two months to produce 12 handwoven, naturally dyed silk scarves, three months to produce 40 metres of organic silk fabric.

We watch as Mae Pan cuts the reddish green leaves of “maak yao.” She has a new recipe to create a luminescent green. She dips the silk yarns in the simmering dye bath twice, then gets help from Mae Pet, the president of Prae Pan, to straighten the fine yarns and hang them to dry.

Preserving these traditional skills – and bringing income to women in Thailand and Laos’s rural areas – is what’s behind TAMMACHAT’s work. Fair trade is about much more than paying fairly for the work. It’s about respecting the people who do the work, learning from each other and supporting sustainable practices. It makes a real difference in the lives of these women.

“Our weavers are very proud when they can weave cloth beautiful enough to attract customers,” Mae Pet tells us. And well they should be.

This entry was posted Friday, October 14th, 2011 at 2:30 am and is filed under guest contributors, soul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Feel free to leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.