Story
Spinning, weaving

Spinning and weaving are the most fundamental ways of utilizing the raw material grown in the village communities of Szeklerland (wool, linen and hemp) for making textile. In every family its specialists were girls and women still at the beginning of the 20th century; they manufactured themselves the pieces of garment of family members. From woollen cloth they made clothes and home textiles; from hemp and linen they made the everyday clothes and materials needed in the household – bedclothes, straw sacks, grain sacks, etc. In the course of spinning they twisted the cleaned fibrous material tied upon the distaff with a spindle to spin yarn, which, rolled up onto a bobbin, became the raw material of weaving. Weaving was pursued in wintertime; the loom connected the longitudinal threads with the transverse threads. Already from the age of 8–10 the girls did their share to ever greater degree in providing the household with textiles; they provided the supply of their own future families by weaving their own dowr. In our days spinning is only pursued on handicraft courses; weaving is still practised by a few tradition-loving housewives out of pleasure or with the aim of providing additional income.

In the weaving workshop of Jolán Csog in Erdőfüle, woven fabrics for clothing and home textiles are still made in the traditional way.