
K'Gut, passionate about dyeing & weaving in Vietnam
Heading to central Vietnam to meet a weaver: K'Gut
K'Gut, a 31-year-old woman, lives in central Vietnam in a small village in the middle of the mountains. This is where she was born and where her mother K'Glong taught her vegetable dyeing and weaving.
K'Gut takes great pride in weaving plant-dyed yarns.
K'Gut loves developing new ranges of 100% plant-based colors! With a big smile, during one of my visits, she showed me some threads in a new color: a gray beige . When I asked her how she did it, she told me she used BEETS! Nature can be quite surprising...
She spends a lot of time trying out new colours but also inventing new patterns, for example a geometric pattern.
Plant dyeing and weaving are a team effort
K'Gut takes care of distributing our fabric orders between the different women in the village. She dyes the threads with her mother or other women in the village. Installing the dyed threads is also a team effort because it goes faster with two people! For this step, the threads are wrapped around pieces of bamboo.
It is with her magic fingers that she weaves traditional patterns
In the photo on the left, K'Gut begins weaving. The traditional color of her ethnic group's clothing is navy blue and the woven patterns are white, orange and green. They represent elements of nature: the eyes of a bird, a grain of rice etc. and also culture: a tool for harvesting for example. Through the patterns, the weavers transmit their culture.
K'Gut is also a mother
K'Gut has three children: two 8-year-old twins and a 5-year-old daughter. His daughter loves playing with her cousin, who lives next door. K'Gut would like to pass on his passion for weaving and plant dyeing to his daughter, provided she is interested!
Coming from a matriarchal ethnic group, she passed on her family name to her children and her husband came to live with her.
When she gets up, K'Gut can discover a village under a mist or sunny depending on the season!