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A bilum is a string bag made by hand in Papua New Guinea. The bag can be made by a process known as looping or knotless netting [1] or by crocheting. Traditionally, the string used was handmade, normally from plant materials. Now, however, many people who can afford to do so make their bilums from store bought yarn and string.
Bilums are used to carry a wide range of items, from shopping goods in large bilums to personal items in purse-sized varieties. Mothers often carry their babies in bilums.
Whilst the traditional method of making bilums using woven plant reeds is still widely spread across Papua New Guinea, many villagers are now finding it easier to use wool-based yarns to make their bags. This allows a greater diversity of color schemes to be incorporated into the making of the bilums, and as a result they are more highly sought after, due to their highly visible and different patterns and color combinations.
Local men usually prefer to use long handle styles so they can be worn over the shoulder, freeing their arms for more important issues, like carrying important bush knives or to grab onto things while hiking mountains. Women often prefer the short handled versions that they can sling across their foreheads to carry greater loads, such as babies and/or large quantities of foodstuff (yams/potatoes/kau-kau etc.)
Either way, there is now a definite swing to the more vivid color/patterning styles that afford the bearer to be more distinctive in making his/her fashion statement.
The concept of bilums are very marketable overseas, and a French company has registered Bilum as a trademark, which it uses for its lines of bags made from recycled building fronts giant advertising sheets, car seatbelts and airbags, and other plastic materials.
They come in different patterns, each pattern resembling certain tribe or clan. More complex and specific patterns are made for carrying during public appearances or displayed during the ceremonial events. The special ceremonial events include yam festivals, tambuan dances, bride price payment, dead compensation and barter system between the river people and the inland wosera people. The complex patterns are of inheritance and only very few ladies in a village possess those inherited talents. The Wosera people are the only tribe that maintains the originalities of the bilum patterns and treasures the complexity of their inherited patterns and it is the only significance of that area.
The bilum concept has spread quite quickly down to the coast and then up to the Highlands in the last decade especially when women in noncircular business identified bilum making as a source of regular income. In the highland region they have extended the bilum concept to make bilumwares especially bilum dresses and skirts. The bilumware is now becoming common during school graduation dressings. Bilumware is now marketable to Papua New Guinea citizens living overseas.
Knitting is a method by which yarn is manipulated to create a textile or fabric; it is used in many types of garments. Knitting may be done by hand or by machine.
Mojo, in the African-American folk belief called hoodoo, is an amulet consisting of a flannel bag containing one or more magical items. It is a "prayer in a bag", or a spell that can be carried with or on the host's body.
A handbag, commonly known as a purse in North American English, is a handled medium-to-large bag used to carry personal items.
A plastic bag, poly bag, or pouch is a type of container made of thin, flexible, plastic film, Nonwoven fabric, or plastic textile. Plastic bags are used for containing and transporting goods such as foods, produce, powders, ice, magazines, chemicals, and waste. It is a common form of packaging.
The Rukai are one of the indigenous people of Taiwan. They consist of six communities residing in southern Taiwan, each of which has its own dialect of the Rukai language. As of the year 2014, the Rukai numbered 12,699, and is the seventh-largest of the 13 officially recognized indigenous groups in Taiwan. The Rukai were formerly called Tsarisen or Tsalisen, which means "people living in the mountain".
A paper bag is a bag made of paper, usually kraft paper. Paper bags are commonly used as shopping bags, packaging, and sacks.
The koteka, horim, or penis gourd is a penis sheath traditionally worn by native male inhabitants of some ethnic groups in New Guinea to cover their genitals. They are normally made from a dried-out gourd, Lagenaria siceraria, although other species, such as Nepenthes mirabilis, are also used. They are held in place by a small loop of fiber attached to the base of the koteka and placed around the scrotum. There is a secondary loop placed around the chest or abdomen and attached to the main body of the koteka. Men choose kotekas similar to ones worn by other men in their cultural group. For example, Yali men favour a long, thin koteka, which helps hold up the multiple rattan hoops worn around their waist. Men from Tiom wear a double gourd, held up with a strip of cloth, and use the space between the two gourds for carrying small items such as money and tobacco.
A messenger bag is a type of sack, usually made of cloth. It is worn over one shoulder with a strap that goes across the chest resting the bag on the lower back. While messenger bags are sometimes used by couriers, they are now also an urban fashion icon. Some types of messenger bags are called carryalls. A smaller version is often called a sling bag.
An It bag is a high-priced designer handbag that has become a popular best-seller. The phenomenon arose in the fashion industry and was named in the 1990s and 2000s. Examples of handbag brands that have been considered "It bags" are Chanel, Hermès and Fendi.
Net or netting is any textile in which the yarns are fused, looped or knotted at their intersections, resulting in a fabric with open spaces between the yarns. Net has many uses, and comes in different varieties. Depending on the type of yarn or filament that is used to make up the textile, its characteristics can vary from durable to not durable.
A big man is a highly influential individual in a tribe, especially in Melanesia and Polynesia. Such a person may not have formal tribal or other authority, but can maintain recognition through skilled persuasion and wisdom. The big man has a large group of followers, both from his clan and from other clans. He provides his followers with protection and economic assistance, in return receiving support which he uses to increase his status.
An antistatic bag is a bag used for storing electronic components, which are prone to damage caused by electrostatic discharge (ESD).
Australian Aboriginal fibrecraft refers to the various ways Aboriginal Australians create fibres traditionally. Materials used depend on where the people live in Australia.
Ripstop fabrics are woven fabrics, often made of nylon, using a special reinforcing technique that makes them resistant to tearing and ripping. During weaving, (thick) reinforcement threads are interwoven at regular intervals in a crosshatch pattern. The intervals are typically 5 to 8 millimeters. Thin and lightweight ripstop fabrics have a 2-dimensional structure due to the thicker threads being interwoven in thinner cloth. Older lightweight ripstop fabrics display the thicker interlocking thread patterns in the material quite prominently, but more modern weaving techniques make the ripstop threads less obvious. A similar effect can be achieved by weaving two or three fine yarns together at smaller intervals.
Salish are skilled weavers and knitters of the Pacific Northwest. They are most noted for their beautiful twill blankets many of which are very old. The adoption of new fabrics, dyes, and weaving techniques allow us to study a wide variety of Salish weavings today.
A string bag, net bag, or mesh bag is an open netted bag. Mesh bags are onstructed from strands, yarns, or non-woven synthetic material into a net-like structure. String bags are used as reusable shopping bags and as packaging for produce.
Huichol art broadly groups the most traditional and most recent innovations in the folk art and handcrafts produced by the Huichol people, who live in the states of Jalisco, Durango, Zacatecas and Nayarit in Mexico. The unifying factor of the work is the colorful decoration using symbols and designs which date back centuries. The most common and commercially successful products are "yarn paintings" and objects decorated with small commercially produced beads. Yarn paintings consist of commercial yarn pressed into boards coated with wax and resin and are derived from a ceremonial tablet called a neirika. The Huichol have a long history of beading, making the beads from clay, shells, corals, seeds and more and using them to make jewelry and to decorate bowls and other items. The "modern" beadwork usually consists of masks and wood sculptures covered in small, brightly colored commercial beads fastened with wax and resin.
Tapestry crochet is sometimes called jacquard crochet, intarsia, mosaic, fair isle, and colorwork, but today these terms usually describe different techniques. Since the yarns are switched back and forth to create motifs, tapestry crochet fabric looks more like it was woven on a loom than crocheted with a hook.
Eisengarn, meaning "iron yarn" in English, is a light-reflecting, strong, waxed-cotton thread. It was invented and manufactured in Germany in the mid-19th century, but is now most well known for its use in cloth woven for the tubular-steel chairs designed by Marcel Breuer while he was a teacher at the Bauhaus design school.
The people of the Trobriand Islands are mostly subsistence horticulturalists who live in traditional settlements. The social structure is based on matrilineal clans that control land and resources. People participate in the regional circuit of exchange of shells called kula, sailing to visit trade partners on seagoing canoes. In the late twentieth century, anti-colonial and cultural autonomy movements gained followers from the Trobriand societies. When inter-group warfare was forbidden by colonial rulers, the islanders developed a unique, aggressive form of cricket.