China - part 5 - more from the second Miao village

Many of the houses in the village were traditional wooden buildings.

We went to see another embroiderer that Mrs Zhang introduced as her sister.  These are some of the panels she was working on.

Once again, she was making the best use of the daylight, as the traditional houses are very dark inside.

These panels would decorate a sleeve.

Her threads.

The embroiderers are working with single fine threads and protect the work they have already stitched with tissue paper.

Kids playing in the village.  Other than the occasional motorbike or scooter, there's no traffic here.

This lady was reeling thread.

Her living room was also functioning as the village shop, and we got bottles of water here.

An embroidered panel she showed us.  I'm not sure how old this is, but the colours were lovely.

Some houses looked like they had been restored.

We visited another village house where I bought some hand woven indigo fabric.

This is a traditional baby carrier from that village.  As well as embroidery, it was decorated with sequins.

I bought a couple of fairly modern, machine embroidered aprons, which are good examples of what the embroidery machines can do (I should have asked about buying a piece of machine embroidery at the factory).

Explaining the story of the figures and animals.

Down by the river.

Fermenting indigo leaves.

The view over the fields below the village, from the village meeting area.

On our way back to Kaili.  The countryside was stunningly beautiful.