Embroidery

Miao Textile Art consists of traditional and modern textile arts and crafts.

Traditional Miao textile examples include:

·       hand-spun hemp cloth production,

·       basket weaving,

·       batik dyeing, and

·       a unique form of embroidery known as Paj Ntaub (“pan dau”) or flower cloth.

Traditional Miao textiles like Paj Ntaub play a significant role in Miao daily life and are often directly associated with larger cultural concerns such as religion, gender, economics, and ethnic identity.

Modern style: The most widely recognized modern style of Miao textile art is a form of embroidery derived from flower cloth, known as story cloth.

Paj Ntaub (pronounced "pan dau") means flower cloth, and is a traditional form of Miao embroidery practiced exclusively by women.

This unique form of embroidery utilizes a wide variety of stitching techniques such as cross-stitch, chain-stitch, running-stitch, and satin-stitch and often features applique, reverse-applique, and batik elements in the design.

Aesthetically, traditional flower cloth is composed of highly stylized, non-representational geometric motifs that are developed both collectively and individually and vary according to region and tribe. These designs are often used to decorate traditional Miao clothing including skirts, head dresses, shirt collars, and sashes worn by both men and women and other textiles such as baby carriers, pillows, and funerary textiles.

According to tradition, Miao girls begin to learn the skills required to produce Paj Ntaub from their mother, grandmother, or older sister as early as three years old and go on to master hundreds of complex patterns.

Skill in Paj Ntaub is highly valued in traditional Miao culture and is used to signify desirable feminine traits like industriousness, creativity, and discipline and often plays a significant role in terms of courtship and marriage prospects. The creativity and skill of Paj Ntaub design was also traditionally linked with the embroiderer's own fertility.[5]

When Miao women get married and join their husband's household, they learn and adopt the new Paj Ntaub techniques and traditions of their husband's clan from their mother-in-law and other female relatives. In doing so, the Paj Ntaub tradition of that clan is maintained.[3]

Although the labor intensive production and decoration of Miao clothing and Paj Ntaub were the exclusive responsibility of women and older girls, this did not release them from other extensive responsibilities involving domestic chores, child care, and farm work. Because of this, sewing would often be done late into the night or during breaks between other responsibilities.

Paj Ntaub is often highly symbolic and the colorful, geometric designs function in a multitude of ways including as abstract representation, religious talisman, group identification.