The fabric of their lives

Beauty, tragedy captured in Hmong needlework

By Carol Guensburg
of the [Milwaukee, Wisconsin] Journal Sentinel staff

June 16, 1996

Black-clothed men and women grinding corn with a crude machine in a
mountain village in northern Laos. A baby strapped to its mother's back as
she feeds chickens. A warplane strafing a row of huts. More peasants, with
green bamboo poles tucked under their arms to float to safety across the
silvery Mekong River. Guards wielding bats at a Thai refugee camp. People
filing onto a big jet bound for the United States.

 Hmong needlework is      These scenes -- embroidered with bright thread on
 available at the Asian   so-called "storycloths" -- recount the traumatic
 Moon Festival, open      exodus of Hmong people from their tribal
 today June 16 from noon  homelands in southeast Asia during the last two
 to 9 p.m. at Maier       decades. American allies during the Vietnam War,
 Festival Park on the     they faced persecution and death at the hands of
 lakefront. Admission is  Viet Cong when U.S. armed forces pulled out in
 $7 at the gate for       '75. Thousands of Hmong hid in the jungles and
 people 13 and older.     fled to Thailand before eventually resettling in
 Hmong needlework also    America -- primarily in Wisconsin, California and
 may be found at craft    Minnesota.
 fairs in other cities
 with significant Hmong   Storycloths and more traditional Hmong needlework
 communities, such as     or paj ntaub are considered decorative works of
 Eau Claire, Green Bay,   art, finding their way into more and more homes.
 La Crosse, Madison and   Many are being displayed and sold at this
 Wausau. Another          weekend's Asian Moon Festival in Maier Festival
 resource is the          Park.
 International Institute
 of Wisconsin             Paj ntaub -- a phrase that means "flower cloth"
 (225-6220), which        and is pronounced "pandoa" -- dates back 2,000
 organizes the Holiday    years. It encompasses embroidery and applique,
 Folk Fair each November  often featuring geometric designs and sometimes
 in Milwaukee.            depicting animals or other creatures.

The storycloths came much later. Evolving in Thai refugee camps, these
picture cloths grew out of an earlier effort to teach written language to
the hill people, Tim Pfaff writes in "Hmong in America: Journey from a
Secret War" (1995, Chippewa Valley Museum Press).

"Missionaries had collected Hmong folk tales in Laos in the 1960s to use in
school primers. They taught Hmong men to draw characters to illustrate the
books. Years later, faced with the unwelcome idleness of refugee camp life,
men continued to draw and Hmong women experimented with transferring the
illustration to cloth."

"I'm not sure who came up with the particular suggestion of the
storycloth," adds James Leary, a consultant on the book and a member of the
University of Wisconsin-Madison's folklore program. "There were various
social workers among them who were trying to look ahead to (the Hmongs')
transition to the United States and had the notion that they could
translate their needlework skills into a larger American market."

Xao Yang Lee, a Hmong exhibitor at Asian Moon, is one such entrepreneur.
She began selling storycloths and other needlework after reaching a Thai
refugee camp in 1976.

"My husband got kill. I move the (five) children to Thailand. I was very
poor, so I start to sew these," says Lee, unfolding a storycloth in the
Sheboygan apartment she shares with her second husband and assorted
children and grandchildren. The 49-year-old woman has eight children,
ranging in age from 7 to 28.

Lee continues to sew to help support her children. She spent the past eight
years making socks at Wigwam Mills, where she was laid off in April. All
along, she has supplemented that income with her exquisite storycloths and
paj ntaub.

"Every weekend during summer, my mother is off to a craft fair selling,"
teases 18-year-old Tong Lee, who just finished his freshman year at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He hopes to become a physician one day.

"My children make me not tired because my children do well in school," Lee
says, shrugging off her long hours.

The elaborate stitching of paj ntaub, which she learned as a young girl in
northern Laos, requires patience and deftness. A 9- or 10-inch square of
reverse applique -- which layers cloth sewn in strips that expose the
bottom or background fabric -- takes several hours. Samples are sewn on
T-shirts and sweat shirts or incorporated in wall hangings and table
runners. Christmas-tree skirts, table cloths, bedspreads, wallets,
headbands and clothing are spread out in their dining room.

Their intricacy justifies prices such as $180 for a storycloth, $60 to $70
for a table runner, $8 for a headband and $280 for a reversible man's
jacket with extensive cross-stitching.

The abstract applique patterns sometimes contain symbolism.

"This is the pattern for elephant's paw," Tong Lee says, indicating a
purple and black square. Speaking on behalf of his mother after a brief
consultation in Hmong, he says: In Laos, "we didn't go to school, we didn't
learn to write. Since we didn't have any camera, we would just leave our
footprints behind."

Xao Lee stretches out two slim lengths of embroidered pink and green silk.
These are belts handed down from "my grandmother's grandmother," she says.
"My mother give them to me. I her favorite daughter."

Xao Lee was the fifth of seven girls, with five brothers. Her mother, now
living in Fresno, Calif., spends her summers in Sheboygan.

Lee's own four daughters are continuing the tradition of paj ntaub. "They
do cross-stitch after school to help me," she says.

Mother and daughters also cooperate on paj ntaub and storycloths in Seng V.
Lo's family. The Brown Deer resident also is showing and selling her work
at Asian Moon.

Lo, 44, has worked on storycloths with her mother Blia Lo and aunt Kia Lo,
sisters living in Milwaukee. A beautiful cloth measuring roughly 6 by 9
feet took three months to complete, "but my mother and aunt did most of
it," Lo says. She was preoccupied by her job at the Hmong-American
Friendship Association.

Storycloths start with pencil sketches on the background cloth. For Lo, it
is a collaborative effort. "My mother will say, we need something here" and
one of the women will draw it. All contribute to the satin stitching and
appliqueing.

Lo came to the United States in 1975 with three children; her husband
followed a year later after the death of his grandmother. Now they have
eight kids, with the oldest 25 and the youngest 7.

Like Lee, Lo makes table runners, clothing, wallet covers and small toys
stuffed with sand. She also makes gorgeous pillow covers in an intricate
cross-stitch pattern of luminous threads ($38) and elegant giraffes ($25)
of polished cotton cloth stuffed with cotton and wired in the legs for more
lifelike poses.

There is no pattern. "I just figured out how to do that," she says "Hmong
people, they catch on very fast."

While the two oldest of her five daughters are continuing Hmong
needlecraft, the younger ones help only with stuffing cotton into the
giraffes or pouring sand into the turtles. The traditional crafts don't
appeal to them.

"Just old people like to do this," Lo says sadly. "The young people --
forget it. It takes too much time for too little money."

Copyright © 1996, Journal Sentinel Inc.