02/07/2025
🌿Nila has learned the cotton-making process from elder women who have spent their entire lives working with hand-spun cotton. The process begins with planting, tending, harvesting, and transforming cotton bolls into yarn. Every step is important and requires careful attention, especially the early stages of cultivation, which determine the quality of the cotton bolls.
🦋Another crucial step is spinning the cotton into yarn. In the past, all of these steps were done by hand, and Nila has made a conscious effort to learn and preserve this wisdom. It’s through this process that one comes to understand the spirit embedded in handmade work.
😍The elder women taught us the process of "feeding the cotton," which means selecting and removing impurities, underdeveloped seeds, and discolored fibers—keeping only the clean, white cotton. This ensures that the spinning process flows smoothly and yields pure, beautiful white threads that are a pleasure to work with.
🦋The cotton that is sorted out isn’t wasted—it goes through a separate process of cleaning and fluffing, eventually becoming filling material for what local people call “nuam pha” (cotton-filled blankets). This step isn’t done by hand; we send it to a cotton mill where machines help separate seeds and fluff the fibers. These fibers, though slightly lower in quality, can still be spun into yarn and woven into fabrics for various uses beyond clothing—like floor mats, cushions, or market bags.
😊The cotton yarn you see here is made from those set-aside fibers. I asked the weavers to spin them, and the result is still beautiful—so much so that some of the elder women even said, “You could make garments from this, too.”
😍Seeing this, I feel proud that our work makes use of every part of the cotton, letting nothing go to waste. Not a single thread is discarded—we always find a meaningful way to use even the smallest scraps.
🌿Nature is always beautiful, even in what may seem useless.
