Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 August 1895 — Clothing in the Philippines. [ARTICLE]

Clothing in the Philippines.

The substitute for cotton and woolen goods in the Philippine Islands is called mouflla cloth, and it is made from the mouffla plant, which is a species of hemp. The fiber of this plant is coarse, stiff, and not pliable. It is the white, inner surface of the long thin shoots that is used. The natives pull the fiber out, wet the finger and twist the thread, which, as a consequence, is uneven and full of little bunches. Very little mouffla cloth is exported from the island, as it has an extensive domestic use. It takes an industrious woman several weeks to make a strip of mouffla cloth ten feet long and three feet wide. Flax being unknown on the islands, the only other material for cloth is silk. The Philippine forests are full of mulberries, and silk was woven long before white men came to the islands. Some of the Philippine silk is as fine as the finest China silk. Much of it is elaborately brocaded, although the process requires an immense amount of time, as the threads which form the pattern have to be tied up each time separately. The nambilla, a square piece of brocaded silk, forms the principal garment of the richdt natives on the smaller islands. This is six feet wide by seven feet long, and requires about seventeen months for its manufacture. A Philippine weaver takes her child on her back and weaves for half an hour, then she goes down to the stream and draws a jug of water, or down to the seashore for a swim in the surf. After weaving a few minutes more, she again goes to the brook or the shore, and washes out some single article of clothing, never washing more than one garment at a time, so that during the day she probably put in about six hours at the loom.