Li Brocade
The Qing Dynasty scholar Cheng Bingzhao used the poem "Li Brocade is as brilliant as clouds" to praise the ingenuity of Li Brocade. The reason why Li brocade is loved by people is mainly because of its fine workmanship, beauty and practicality, and its national characteristics in spinning, weaving, dyeing and embroidery. Li brocade is mainly made of weaving, dyeing and flower weaving, with less embroidery.
Li Brocade is divided into four major crafts:
Spinning
The main tools are hand-twisted spinning wheels and foot-operated spinning wheels. Hand-twist spinning is the oldest spinning craft of mankind, and the tool used in this craft is a spinning wheel. The areas inhabited by the Li ethnic group are extremely rich in textile raw materials such as kapok and wild hemp. Before the popularity of cotton textiles, wild linen textiles were popular in Li areas. People usually peel off the outer skin of wild hemp collected during the rainy season, and then soak and rinse it into hemp pieces. After the linen is dyed, it is twisted into linen yarn by hand or twisted with a spinning wheel, and then woven into cloth. Wild linen has a solid texture and is mostly used to make coats and lower garments worn during work.
Dyeing
Dyes mainly use wild or domestic plants in mountainous areas as raw materials. These dyes are brightly colored, not easy to fade, and come from a wide range of sources. Dyeing is an important empirical knowledge among the Li people. There is also a tie-dye dyeing technique in the Meifu dialect area, which was called tie-dyeing in ancient times. First tying the warp, then dyeing the threads and then weaving the cloth, the skillful combination of tying, dyeing and weaving techniques is unique in our country.
Weaving
Looms are mainly divided into two types: pedal looms and waist looms. The Juyao loom is a very ancient loom, very similar to the looms used by the Banpo clan six or seven thousand years ago. Li women can weave exquisite and gorgeous complex patterns with the Juyao loom, and its jacquard technology makes modern large-scale looms Jacquard equipment is far behind. Li brocade with different patterns, colors and styles was once an important symbol to distinguish tribal groups with different blood relationships, and has extremely important humanistic value.
Embroidery
Li embroidery is divided into single-sided embroidery and double-sided embroidery. Among them, the double-sided embroidery on women's tops in the Baisharun dialect area is the most famous. The "Introduction to Chinese Ethnology" compiled by Mr. Liang Zhaotao, a famous ethnologist in my country, describes double-sided embroidery in this way: "Local Li women of the Li ethnic group (i.e. Run dialect Li ethnic group) are good at double-sided embroidery, and are characterized by exquisite composition and modeling. , the double-sided embroidery they embroidered is of exquisite craftsmanship, no less than the Han double-sided embroidery in Suzhou."
The four crafts of spinning, weaving, dyeing and embroidery of the Li people are all rich in their own characteristics, and the Li people in various places have created a variety of weaving, dyeing and embroidery techniques according to their own preferences. For example, in addition to flat embroidery, the Li people in Baisha County have created a kind of colored embroidery that is processed on both sides. It is exquisitely crafted, colorful and full of characteristics, and is similar to the beauty of Suzhou's "double-sided embroidery". The most outstanding embroidery technique is double-sided embroidery, which is generally used on women's clothing.