Young Hmong Drop Stitches of Centuries-Old Family Tradition

When Pang Wang first learned to stitch, she was just 7 years old and living in the mountains of Laos. Like the others girls in her community, her work was clumsy at first, but she gradually mastered the painstaking art of Hmong needlework.

Now living in Fountain Valley, worlds away from the one in which she learned to stitch, Pang Wang keeps up the tradition of this centuries-old, intricate craft. In her hands, the smallest piece of cloth becomes part of a multicolored canvas, a rainbow of impossibly tiny stitches. Her stitches are so small that three small appliqued triangles will easily fit in a space no longer than that of a fingernail, each triangle held in place with at least a dozen stitches. Pieces are completed in strips and then sewn together.

It is so time consuming to create these needlework pieces that they are usually kept within a family--they are part of its history. Occasionally, pieces will be displayed at fairs, special exhibits and museum craft shows.

Pang Wang, 47, and others in her generation continue to create new pieces, but their American-born children are not following suit.

Pang Wang and her husband, Chang Nhaku Chue, have seven children, the youngest still at home. Like most of their peers, though, none have learned Hmong-style stitching. It is a break in a very long tradition.

For thousands of years, Hmong women have stitched intricate patterns and designs on to pieces of homespun linen while tending to their families, working on their farms and attending to household chores.

The Hmong, originally from China, are an ancient tribe. A nomadic people, they settled over the years in a number of different areas, including Laos, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and China. They found that in remote hills and mountains they could preserve their traditions.

During the Vietnam War, Hmong soldiers fought alongside American troops in Laos and, because of their knowledge of the jungle, provided invaluable assistance to U.S. soldiers. Today, according to the U.N. Office of Refugee Resettlement, about 2,500 Hmong refugees call Orange County their home.

Yet because the Hmong tended to remain cut off from society--they only recently adopted a written language--little outside attention was paid to them, let alone to their handiwork.

It was in the handiwork, though, that important events, maps and other cultural information were recorded.

“The Hmong didn’t know about technology. We were farmers,” said Chang, who, with his family, arrived in the United States in 1978 after spending three years in a Thai resettlement camp.

“Most Hmong settled in Burma, Laos and North Vietnam,” Chang said. “I was born in Laos. My father was born in Burma and my grandfather in China. Our clans tend to move every 30 to 50 years.”

But for all the upheavals in their lives, the Hmong women continued their practice of creating intricate and colorful fabrics.

Pantau, as it is called in the Hmong language, consists of a variety of stitches including embroidery, cross-stitch, applique and other decorative handiwork.

When a girl reached the age of 5 to 7, her mother would begin teaching her the intricate stitchery--and how to weave the cloth on which to stitch. The boys were taught by their fathers to create bamboo flutes, which they played while the women sewed. (The flutes are also used to communicate through special codes across long distances.)

“The sewing is very difficult to learn,” Chang said. “Often you see the little girls crying because they want to play. The mothers will be saying to their daughters: ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re so lazy. And these stitches are no good. Too big and sloppy. Do it over.’ The mothers are angry with the daughters, and the daughters are angry with the mothers.

“But the little girls do learn.”

The women would grow cotton, wash and dry it, dye the fibers (usually black) and then spin it into thread to be woven into fabric. Just creating the fabric on which to display their elaborate needlework could easily take a year.

When the fabric was ready, the women could take their coveted and carefully guarded needles out and begin the laborious process of creating the tapestry. Most of this work took place as they were walking--either out to the fields or back to their homes after a day of work.

“The women carry their sewing in little baskets tied around their waists, and they pull it out and work on it as they walk,” Chang says. “In fact, if you sit and sew, the others will make fun of you and say things like, ‘You must be a rich lady to have so much time to sit and sew.’ ”

Most of the sewing went into creating elaborate skirts meant to be worn on special occasions such as the Hmong New Year. “Each woman needed to complete at least one skirt a year or people would talk and say she was lazy,” Chang said.

In addition to the skirts, the women would often also create quilted jackets. Many were made with a little flap at the back of the neck that, when turned over, revealed perhaps the most elaborately embroidered piece on the jacket.

“Others in the village or from neighboring clans would walk up to the women and turn over the little flap to see her finest work,” Chang said. “The young men would often tease the girls and look at it to see if she’d make a good wife. The other girls would be very anxious to see how their stitching matched up to the others.”

Today, these adorned fabrics are prized as pieces of art and used as pillows, quilts and wall hangings.

“Many people who see Hmong embroidery think it is created on a machine because it is so even and precise,” Chang said. “But it is all done by hand.”

For many Hmong immigrating to the United States and its urban ways, the needlework is one of the traditions falling by the wayside.

“In the villages, there were no distractions,” Chang said. “There were no bills to pay or appointments to keep. There was no television or books to study. You worked on your farm, tended to your family, and the women sewed. That was the focus of their free time.

“You can still find some of the women sewing in Thailand or Laos, but for Hmong women in the United States, there are many more things to do and opportunities. The younger women aren’t interested in spending so much time doing needlework.”