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Photo Story: Indigo Tie-Dye Cloth, Northern Guinea

You can buy many different patterns and designs! It's easy to find the leaves - they grow everywhere. The leaves are crumpled by hand The indigo leaves are pounded Indigo is laid out to dry on the ground Everybody is involved, from young to old!
This man is folding the cloth so it gets a special pattern. The women do most of the work. It's impossible to remove the dye from your hands! Even children help. Here, they are beating the cloth to straighten it out. The tailor makes the cloth into dresses or suits. Woman models indigo cloth from northern Guinea

 

The sentences below are mixed up. Copy them to Microsoft Word and put them in the correct order. Hold your mouse over the pictures for helpful hints. If you click, you can see a larger version of the pictures.

  1.  ... and then pounded into balls of dye...
     
  2.  ... It's hard work and their hands are permanently stained indigo blue
     
  3.  ... which are laid out in the sun to dry, covered with branches to protect them from animals.
     
  4. All the women in Laba, from the very young to the very old, make the indigo dye but they say they only earn 200 Guinean Francs (10 US cents) for a pile of 30 balls, so they just do it to earn pocket money.
     
  5. Another group of people in the nearby town of Labe does the tie-dying. This man is tying cloth into intricate patterns, which will be reproduced in the cloth.
     
  6. Fresh leaves give the best colour. They are scrunched up by hand...
     
  7. Tailors then turn the "Thioub" into clothes. Two or three pieces are tied together so a whole suit or dress has the same pattern. When the clothes are new, the dye also stains your skin blue.
     
  8. The Fouta Djalon region of northern Guinea is famous across West Africa for its "Thioub" material, tie-dyed with indigo. It comes in a huge variety of patterns.
     
  9. The village of Laba is known as the source of the best indigo, which grows everywhere.
     
  10. The whole family is involved - these children are beating the cloth to straighten it out after it had been tied up so tightly.
     
  11. The women do the dyeing
     
  12. Thioub can be made it into anything you want - shirts, African gowns or this dress, as modelled by Fatoumata Ba in Laba village.

See the original presentation on this from the BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/3694661.stm

For Teachers

Download this activity as a Zip file (Microsoft Word, photos, answers). Save it to your desktop. Freezip is a useful utility if you don't have WinZip.

You can read more about Indigo and dyeing here. http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/u3tc/u3materials/tcsessay.html

 

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