Weaving Li Minority "Brocade": travel notes - Chris Buckley

Weaver Huang Ji Xiang, who is a member of the Qi subgroup of the Li people, making the cloth that is called "Li brocade" locally. This particular cloth is for the tourist market, rather gaudy and with large, widely spaced designs (probably for ease and speed of production), but Chris thinks that the basic technique is the same used to make most Li minority supplementary weft weavings.

The loom consists of a foot rod and a breast beam, and the warp is wound continuously around these. In between are heddles and various tools for opening sheds and keeping the warp threads aligned. The warp threads are mostly black with a few colored warps to provide some stripes.