Wenlock the Weaver!

Hello from Laos!  Lots of people in Laos make silk cloth on weaving looms.  This is their job and they make money by selling the cloth in the shops.  

I went to a museum to look at how cloth is made. Here you can see me in front of a loom where the weavers are making blue cloth.  

To make the cloth, they put some blue thread into a boat-shaped piece of wood called a shuttle.

Then they send the shuttle backwards and forwards through the weaving loom.  Each time it goes backwards or forwards, it adds a new strand to the cloth.

Uncle Guy had a go and discovered that you need quite a bit of practise to be really good at weaving!

At the museum, the weavers were making some very complicated pieces of cloth with pretty patterns.  This pink silk cloth is for somebody's wedding.  They'd better make sure it's ready on time!

I was very surprised to find out how blue thread gets its colour.  The colour comes from this plant ...

They pick the leaves and mix them up in a bowl to get a kind of blue syrup or blue dye.

Then they put the thread in the blue dye until it is the right colour.  Once it has dried, they can start weaving new pieces of cloth with it.

It was interesting to see how cloth is made.  I think the people who make it are very clever.

I don't know if Robin, Adam and Grace have any clothes that were made in Laos but they might have some clothes that were made in Vietnam and China, which are the countries next door to Laos.  Perhaps they could look at the labels in some of their t-shirts and find out.