Beef Tripe Quilt

Beef Tripe Quilt

　　Beef Tripe Quilt: The Beef Tripe Quilt, a fine piece of textile craftsmanship still practiced by the Blang people in Dananzhi Village, Bangbing Township, Shuangjiang Autonomous County, gets its name from its resemblance to beef tripe. It has an inner and outer layer, with intricate and elaborate workmanship. Weaving one such quilt takes about 15–30 days. Its production process consists of nine steps: ginning cotton, fluffing cotton, rolling cotton strands, spinning cotton thread, winding the thread, boiling the thread, coiling the thread, drawing the thread, and weaving the cotton.

Cotton is harvested from the fields, and the seeds are removed using a homemade cotton gin (ginning cotton); the seedless cotton is then fluffed using a sheep sinew bow to soften and loosen it while also removing dust (fluffing cotton); the fluffed cotton is rolled into strands with a wooden stick or slightly thick chopsticks to prepare it for spinning (rolling cotton strands); the cotton strands are spun into fine threads on a spinning wheel (spinning cotton thread); the threads are then wound into equal-length warp threads (winding the thread); to maintain the firmness and strength of the cotton thread, the wound warp threads are boiled in a pot with small red rice or corn, then rinsed and sun-dried (boiling the thread); to prevent tangling and make the process easier, the threads are wound into spools using a spinning wheel (coiling the thread); the spooled threads are fixed onto the spinning frame using a thread-drawing machine (drawing the thread); several strands of warp threads drawn from the winding frame are secured with a cloth strap about five centimeters wide, tied around the weaver’s waist. When the weaver presses down the pedal with their right foot, the warp threads shift positions, the weft threads are woven from side to side, and the comb moves back and forth—while coarse cotton is used to create a raised nap, the fabric is simultaneously woven evenly. Through this repetitive process, the pure white all-cotton Beef Tripe Quilt is completed.