Yaeyama Ramie Machines are seldom used at any stage in the production of this cloth, or during the cultivation of the ramie. Two methods of dyeing are used. The kasuri or ikat threads are either tied by hand and then yarn dyed, or a bamboo brush is used to rub the dye into the yarn as required. The patterns are stylized images of things used in daily life, or are motifs drawn from nature such as flowing water, birds or fireflies. When this ramie cloth was used to pay taxes, a manual of design was provided by the Ryukyu court at Shuri and those designs are still in use today. This page uses QuickTime. To download click on the icon. Stage One Click on the picture for QuickTime Movie Obtaining the Fiber: Ramie or the Chinese silk plant (Boehmeria nivea) is a member of the nettle family and can be harvested four or five times a year. After soaking the stems in water for a few hours, the inner fiber is stripped away from the skin using a blunt knife or something similar. Having dried the fiber in the shade, it is then split into narrow strips with the fingernails, while occasionally wetting the fingers. Individual fibers are then spun together. The warp is spun on a spinning wheel. The weft, on the other hand, is joined and given a slight twist by hand. It takes a great deal of patience and experience to be able to produce a thread of an even thickness. Consequently, most of the people doing this arduous work are women in their eighties. Stage Two Measuring: Having divided up the thread into some for use as the ikat pattern and some for the background, the number of threads and their required length is calculated following the design. To stop the ikat pattern from becoming distorted and to prevent the dye from spreading where it is not wanted, the thread is coated with starch, stretched and allowed to dry. Stage Three Tying: To prevent the background from being dyed, sections of the thread marked off using an ikat pattern measure are bound using a strong cotton thread and vinyl tape. The bound thread is then immersed in water to remove the starch from the sections exposed to the dye. Stage Four Dyeing: Most of the dyestuffs are found locally and include kuuru (somemono-imo in Japanese), which is particularly associated with this cloth, fukugi (Garcinia subelliptica), soshiju (Acacia confusa), and indigo (Indigofera tinctoria L.). Kuuru: The dye is made by stripping off the skin and boiling the ground up pulp in water. The darker the red brown color is the better the dye. The thread is immersed in the dye and mordanted with such things as alum, limewater, wood ash water or iron to improve the color. Soshiju: The dye is made by boiling the leaves. After filtering the liquid with a piece of cloth, the thread is immersed and left for a time in the dye. A mordant is used to improve the color. A number of different colors can be achieved ranging from off-white to a bright yellow. Indigo: Stems are cut and put in water, a weight is placed on top and left for 24 hours. The branches are then removed and some lime is added. The lime reacts with the indigo pigment, which then settles. The supernatant is drained off. This process is repeated in order to produce a sediment or paste of indigo, which is then placed in a vat. In about ten days after adding some wood ash water and water, the mixture begins to ferment. The thread is dipped in the indigo, which oxidizes to produce the distinctive indigo blue as the thread is removed from the dye and exposed to the air. This is repeated a number of times. Stage Five Aya Beam: The beam carries the ikat pattern threads. Having removed the ties, the ikat thread is stretched out and threaded through the reed following the design. Then, as the ikat threads are carefully wound onto the beam, thick pieces of paper are wound in between the thread to prevent the pattern from becoming distorted. Stage Six Bamboo Brush Dyeing: If the thread is dyed by rubbing the dye into the thread with a bamboo brush, the kuuru dye is first made stronger by taking some of the dye squeezed from the plant material, and evaporating off some of the water by drying in the sun. Having calculated the number of weft threads needed, the weft is put on a frame, which is the same width as the cloth. Then, using a bamboo brush, the dye is rubbed into the threads to form the pattern. The ikat warp, which has been threaded through the reed temporarily, is wound onto the aya beam and then dyed using the bamboo brush. Stage Seven Jii Beam: The background thread is carried on a separate beam. Having threaded the reed, the background warp is wound onto the jii beam and thick pieces of paper are inserted as the thread is wound. Stage Eight Click on the picture for QuickTime Movie Weaving: The aya beam is set above the jii beam on the loom and then the reed and heddle are threaded. Using two beams has a number of advantages. First of all it makes the job of winding the weft onto the beam much easier. It also means there is less chance of any distortion appearing in the weaving because it is possible to make adjustments by having the two sets of thread. One of the distinctive features of the loom is its relatively short front-to-back dimension, making distortions in the ikat pattern less likely. Stage Nine Rinsing in the Sea: After drying in the sun and having fixed the color, the cloth is rinsed in the sea. This helps to bring up the white areas of the ramie and establish the colors of the ikat. Using the sun and the sea in this way is one of the special features of the production process. Stage Ten Beating: The washed and stretched cloth is rolled up, put on a piece of cotton cloth and beaten with a wooden mallet to bring up a luster and to improve the feel of the cloth.