The very begining starting from hanging 14 to up to 2000 strings of silk down from a wooden hanger, and to tie the areas where white is wished to stay according to the desirable patterns. Then send the tied silks to different colour dying expertise to dye the colours wanted. After the dying is completed, horizontal strings of velvet, silk or cotton will be crossed over to the vertical strings of silk. To finish up, braids and internal cotton piece may be decorated and sewed to make the ikat piece beautiful and comfortable. Among all, velvet ranked first in terms of quality and value, silk the second, and cotton the last.

The ikat pieces are to show social status, wealth and power of a particular person in the "5 tan" areas where they were later under the reign of The Soviet Union. The earliest shown in the exhibition can be traced back to the 18th century only as the previous ikats had all been worn out due to the aging. However the process and knowledge of ikat making had been existed in the world for more than 100 years.

The dowry pieces are very exquisite, with fake sleaves haning at the back of the ikat, sashes hanging down, exuberant colours and beautiful patterns from top to toe. The ikat pieces reflecting three major stages of women are very interesting. For Islamic unmarried girls, they will all wear the ikat with black background along with the patterns, braids etc as usual. For married women, they will wear yellow ikat along with designs such as fake sleeves hanging at the back showing a taste of fashion; For women over 63 of age, the ikat will have a white background again with the all time wonderful patterns.

The jewelery piece for the nomadic women are as tough as the life they are living to suit their life styles, these jewelleries are heavy and huge, as well as the dowry headress. The wedding tradition of vieling the face is also in the islamic tradition same as almost the rest of the world! nomadic women have much more free social status as they do not have to viel their face when going out to the public, where as the traditional Islamic women has to do so.

The history of ikat

There are known links between ikat production in India and South-East Asia. Patola cloth, a double ikat from Gujarat, western India, used to be exported to Indonesia for the use of the royal families. As early as the fifteenth century Gujarati merchants brought patola to Indonesian rulers, an activity taken over by the Dutch at the beginning of the seventeenth century to gain concessions in the spice trade.^[1]

The patterns in the Patola Ikats are strikingly similar to the double ikats produced in Bali, Indonesia. Ancient trading routes linked India and South-East Asia, like Cambodia and also linked Central Asia with India. Because woven fabric rarely survives for more than a few centuries it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine where the technique of Ikat originated. It probably developed in several different locations independently. Ikat was known to be produced in several pre-Columbian Central and South American cultures. Ikat floral patterns are traditionally used in Europe on Mallorca, Spain.

How ikat is made

Ikats created by dyeing the warp are the easiest to make. Before the warp strings are attached to the loom they are arranged into bundles. Each bundle is tied and dyed separately, so that a pattern will emerge when the loom is set up. This takes a good deal of skill. The tightly bound bundles are sometimes covered with wax or some other material that will keep the dyes from penetrating. The process is repeated several times for additional colors.

Some patterns have many strands in the cloth that are all dyed the same way which creates a blocky design. In some weaving traditions each strand of the cloth may be dyed differently from the ones next to it. Usually the pattern repeats in symmetrical or asymmetrical ways. In the illustration above, the right side of the weaving is identical to the left. To make these elaborate patterns the weaver will still bundle and dye several threads together, but when the loom is prepared, a single thread will be used from each bundle for each section of the pattern. Elaborate ikat patterns like this are often handed down from generation to generation in the same family.

After the threads are dyed the loom is set up. The pattern is visible to the weaver when the dyed threads are used as warp. Threads can be adjusted so that they line up correctly with each other. Some ikat styles (like in Japan and Guatemala) don't try to get the patterns precisely lined up, others (like in Timor in Indonesia) the patterns are so accurate, that you have to look closely to determine that the pattern was not printed on the cloth.Dying the weft makes it much more difficult to make ikats with precise patterns. The weft is one continuous strand that is woven back and forth, so any errors in how the string is tied and dyed are cumulative. Because of this, weft ikats are usually used when the precision of the pattern is not the main concern. Some patterns become transformed by the weaving process into irregular and erratic designs. However, the precise images of Japanese ikats are made from weft ikat when they are not double ikats.

Double ikats are the most difficult to produce. In the finest examples from India and Indonesia, the warp and the weft are precisely tied and dyed so that the patterns interlock and reinforce each other when the fabric is woven.

The most precise ikat is the Japanese oshima -- thrice-woven cloth. The warp and weft threads are used as warp to weave stiff fabric, upon which the thread for the ikat weaving is spot-dyed. Then the mats are unraveled and the dyed thread is woven into oshima cloth.

Other variants

In Thailand the local ikat type of woven cloth is known as Matmi (also spelt 'Mudmee' or 'Mudmi').^[2] Traditional Mudmi cloth was woven for daily use among the nobility. Other uses included ceremonial costumes and Buddhist monks' robes. Nowadays it is mostly sold in the tourist market.

This type of cloth is the favorite silk item woven by ethnic Khmer people living in southern Isaan, mainly in Surin, Sisaket and Buriram.^[3]