Cloth Dyeing Activity at Dai Lue's Lifestyle Community in Phayao Province

Cloth Dyeing Activity at Dai Lue's Lifestyle Community in Phayao Province

     Dai Lue's lifestyle community is located in Chiang Khum District in Phayao Province. It is a cultural tourism community that gathers four main villages, which are Ban Tat Sop Van Moo 1, Ban Tat Moo 2, the community of Dai Lue Ban Yuan Moo 3, and the community of Dai Lue Ban Mang Moo 4. The four villages obviously have the Dai Lue way of life in terms of dressing, as well as religious traditions and beliefs about ghosts. 

     Moreover, there are various special attractions around the areas, and one interesting activity is dyeing cloth with natural colors at Auntie Malee's house, which has been opened as a natural learning center and teaches tourists about dyeing silk cloth in colors made from natural material, such as barks of different trees. There are two ways of dyeing cloth taught at Auntie Malee's house: 

1. Hot dyeing – boiling the pieces of bark to extract their color; 

    

2. Cool dyeing – using Hom leaves that are washed and soaked one day and one night. After that, remove the residue and add a little bit of calcium hydroxide; then, stir and leave overnight. Before dyeing, the color is greenish yellow. It can be used over and over until it's all gone. If you stop using the color, however, it will go bad, smell bad, and won't work on the cloth anymore.

     In the process, you soak your pieces of cloth in the natural color and press for 15-20 minutes. If you want the color to stay in for a long time, you must repeat this step many times. Visitors can try their hand at dyeing cloth and take the final product home as a souvenir.