Unique brocade weaving craft of the Ve people

The Ve people are a minority group of the Gie - Trieng ethnic group. The Ve people still preserve many traditional cultural values, of which the most typical is the traditional brocade weaving profession.

In the past, the brocade of the Ve people in Dac Pring commune ( Da Nang city) was made from homemade materials from trees, grass, leaves, and flowers of the mountains and forests. Later, the people learned to grow cotton on the upland land to get weaving materials.

Cotton seeds are sown in early September and harvested around January of the following year. The harvested cotton is dried in the sun until it is white and free of mold. Once the cotton is dry, the Ve women remove the empty and damaged cotton seeds, then put them in a cotton rolling tool (trâl ý) to break the seeds.

When the cotton has been rolled and all the seeds removed, women use a cotton-pulling tool (gal ý ý) to fluff the cotton, then use a small rolling stick (lieh) like a chopstick to create cotton thread. The cotton thread is put into a spinning wheel (trắc), the cotton thread is hooked to the winding stick on the spinning wheel, and the wheel is turned by hand. Wherever the wheel turns, it transmits circular motion to the rolling stick, the cotton thread is pulled out and spun into yarn.

In this way, one cotton thread after another is drawn out. At this point, the cotton yarn used for weaving is initially completed. The yarn from the shuttle is taken out and wound into a winding tool to form long skeins of yarn ready for dyeing.

Mrs. Kring Thi Viet passed on her experience in coordinating colored threads on brocade to the young Ve generation in the village.

Ms. Kring Thi Viet (65 years old, Ve ethnic group, in Dac Pring commune) said: Natural cotton fibers are white, Ve women use grass, trees, flowers and leaves to create dyes... The people take great pains to soak, pound, and mix some tree barks, roots, tubers, kitchen ash... to create brown and black colors. To create red color, the Ve people use brown tubers and the bark of the ta-vat tree (moc sang) crushed and soaked in water to make dyes. To create yellow color, they take crushed turmeric and soak it in water, cut the stems of the cho hong tree into small pieces, then put the fibers in to boil until they become gluey and then take them out to dry. The decorative patterns on the traditional costumes of the Ve people mainly use red, white, yellow, indigo...

According to Ms. Kring Thi Viet, the most difficult step is assembling the parts of the loom (chau noa) and spreading the yarn on the frame in the correct order of the colored yarns. On the yarn spreading tool, black yarn always dominates the entire loom and serves as the background for the colored yarn bands that need to arrange the patterns according to the weaver's intention. The patterns on the Ve people's costumes are mainly red, yellow, and white yarn bands, spread along the loom, interwoven between layers of black yarn.

When weaving, Ve women often thread the shuttle, punch the thread, raise and lower the position of the thread layers, separate the colored threads with porcupine quills to create patterns. Creating patterns for costumes is a difficult technique, requiring the craftsman to have not only weaving experience but also meticulousness and skillful hands. During the weaving process, beeswax is always applied to the parts of the loom to create smoothness, the sharp tip of porcupine quills is used to spread out the areas where the weaving is too thick or too thin to make the brocade even.

Ve women perform the cotton separation and spinning steps.

The time it takes to weave a product depends on the health of each person, depending on seasonal leisure, they can weave in the evening or weave continuously during the rainy season. Brocade fabrics are 2.5 - 3 m long, 1.8 - 2 m wide, to a pair of do (rô moong) fabrics 3 m long, 2 m wide, thick and beautiful, sometimes taking a whole year to weave. Each pattern on the brocade is extremely delicate, telling a story about the village, ancestors, mountain gods, stream gods... Short skirts (kalê pếch), short-sleeved shirts (ka lê), shawls (kalê pơ), long skirts (kalê pẹhs), loincloths (klai), robes (lăng lẻh) or head scarves (kheng grum câl) are always worn by the Ve people on traditional village festivals or to attend weddings, to go out to other villages to visit relatives, relatives...

In the past, the clothing products made by Ve women were mainly for daily family activities; later they were used for exchanging goods. Nowadays, with economic development and widespread integration, people dress more simply in their daily activities. However, during important festivals, the Ve people still wear their traditional ethnic costumes.

Source: https://baodaklak.vn/van-hoa-du-lich-van-hoc-nghe-thuat/202509/doc-dao-nghe-det-tho-cam-cua-nguoi-ve-ab32139/