Handwoven Scarf

Tu Meh makes a truly large number of scarves today, most of them variations-on-a-theme of her favorite geometric designs. With RAW she started out asking for cotton thread but nowadays she is also fond of using bamboo thread, for its supple, soft qualities. Both versions sell very well to RAW customers. One time in 2023 at a weaving convention hosted by a local university, participants bought many dozens of her scraves.

In her weaving, Tu Meh uses a circular warp with continuous heddles. She treasures her split rod tie stick, which she brought along to the US from Burma. Her textiles typically employ complementary warp pick up or complementary warp floats. Her weavings often rely on complex repetitive geometric designs (found in much Karenni textile hand manufacture). Her weavings also often include a series of stripes and her cloths are often embellished with hand-stitched embroidery. When she first moved to Massachusetts Tu Meh made shoulder bags (Lweh-eit), traditional Karenni blouses (Chikas K’Kyaw) but now she concentrates on scarves. She is pleased to be able to harvest her own bamboo at the Plymouth, MA experimental bamboo farm, to make the sticks for her back strap loom. She sets up the tension for her loom by employing heavy bags full of rice.

Tu Meh is one of the most deeply creative, innovative artisans collaborating with RAW. She makes so many different variations of this type of scarf that we showed approximately 30 of these during the 2020 Worcester Center for Crafts’ “Crafting a New Home” exhibition. We hung three rows of these on a large bamboo frame, inundating the gallerygoers with the fruits of Tu Meh’s creative energies. Some of her scarves are composed of simple stripes; others are much more complex, with inset motifs. Once in Worcester she also began to explore an immensely wide range of thread colors, ranging from soft pastels to bright blues. Tu Meh also experiments with new combinations of thread colors. In her current focus on scarves she does her experiments in different colors, color combinations, motifs, and thread types. She is a master designer.