Traditional weaving and embroidery of the Mong people

Weaving and embroidering brocade is a long-standing traditional craft, closely associated with daily life and bearing the unique cultural features of the Mong people in Tua Chua district, Dien Bien province. Weaving and embroidering brocade is a traditional craft closely associated with daily life and has been passed down from generation to generation, bearing the unique cultural features of the Mong women here.

The costumes of Mong women are always very colorful. However, to make a complete costume, it takes a lot of time and effort of the grandmothers, mothers, sisters and craftsmen. The ingenuity of Mong women has enabled them to make their ethnic costumes with their skillful hands. With embroidery techniques, Mong women also use very simple techniques such as cross-stitching with interwoven "x" stitches or embroidering with different colors to create patterns such as decorative fringes on the arms, neck or waist of the shirt, creating unique works of art representing an entire long-standing culture.

With the weaving profession, Mong women when they reach adulthood are all taught the craft of weaving linen. Whether a woman is talented, hard-working, and skillful or not is also evaluated by her linen weaving skills. Every year, around March and April, Mong people in Tua Chua begin to plant flax. In July and August, after harvesting, they dry the flax in the sun and then strip it into fibers.

Weaving a traditional Mong costume from linen can take a whole year because it involves many complicated steps. Mong women in Tua Chua district, Dien Bien are contributing to preserving, conserving and restoring the traditional weaving and embroidery craft of the nation.

In Tua Chua, in the past, the Mong people's brocade products mainly served the needs of relatives and families, as dowries for their daughters when they got married. Nowadays, women have made new brocade products such as: skirts, shirts, scarves, phone bags... Those products have become souvenirs that are very popular with domestic and foreign tourists. The uniqueness of the Mong people's products in Tua Chua also comes from their talent for decorating pants, shirts, and skirts with beeswax. Their techniques and ways of making clothes are quite unique, they do not have specific drawings, do not use measuring rulers, but the lines are straight. Because the clothes are made with high techniques, on average each set of clothes is sold for 7 - 8 million VND, some sets cost more than 10 million VND.