Where do I start? My passionate love of mud cloth has developed without my realising it.
Growing up in Africa as a child I have become increasingly aware of the distinct style of manufacturing cloth in this unique way.
Mali - the home of mud cloth, also known as bogolanfini meaning mud dyed cloth.
Among the first to make mud cloth were the Fulani people.
Other West African countries have each adopted their own version of spinning, weaving and dying this fabulous versatile and vibrant cloth..
I can remember as a young girl in the early 1950's in the then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) attempting to make mud cloth using cotton yarns given to me by local villages on my fathers farm.
There is something about home craft that goes deep into most of us with the need to get your hands dirty mixing mud for dyes or clay for pottery or weaving yarns.
The hands on ancient ways give as much fulfilment while being therapeutic as well.
The craft of weaving this cloth goes back as far as the 8th century when the Boubou robe was worn by the Ghana Islamized people and 13th Century Mali Empire.
It has not changed much since then regardless of the push for more modern techniques and volume manufacturing of today.
It is amazing that the traditional method of making mud cloth has travelled down through and across Africa.
Tuareg men wear cloth sewn from half inch strips of hand woven cotton that is dyed with the indigo plant, a method of dying used because of water shortage.
The indigo dye rubs off onto their skin and they are known as the 'blue men of the desert'.
The Mali woman enjoys picking the cotton and transporting it in baskets on her head before spinning the cotton into a soft spun yarn.
The unique method of weaving mud cloth is the privilege of the Mali men who are well skilled and fast with their hands.
It is all in the handling of the yarn and a consistent tension to create a balanced piece of cloth.
The strips of cloth can finish at any width up to about 12 cm and sewn together usually with a zig zag stitch that is more flexible than straight sewing and less likely to break.
This creates one large piece of cloth to be used for clothing or rugs..
The fabric is then washed in hot water so as to shrink it before dying.
Setting the fabric is done by rinsing the fabric in a watered solution made from tea leaves of the Bogalon tree.
The tea solution increases the ability of the mud dye to be absorbed then the cloth is laid out to dry once again.
The mud dye is prepared and painted along each of the strips by the Mali women.
The mud absorbs into the cloth before drying.
Designs can be created by placing objects on the fabric before painting the dye on the cloth, a bit like stencilling is done today.
The more coats of dye used the deeper the colour will become.
Caustic Soda is used 'Sudani' for bleaching the stencilled out areas on the cloth.
As the base cloth is now stained with tea the painted bleaching process is required to make the designs clearer against the mud dyed cloth.
The cloth is then rinsed once more to remove any excess mud.
The mud cloth piece is now complete and can be designed for any type of clothing or used as furnishing fabrics.
No two pieces will be the same each piece is unique due to the hand crafting process of the cloth.