Central panel of a blanket (kumo)

The master weavers of the T’boli people are known as “dreamweavers.” The goddess of abaca (a plant fiber) is said to come to a weaver in her dreams and lead her to envision patterns. The production of a cloth such as this one is a difficult and time-consuming task, from the harvesting of fibers to the tying of the ikat patterns, the dyeing of the threads, to the weaving of the cloth. The T’boli are one of the few communities still weaving in this traditional manner.

T’boli abaca weaving is known as t’nalak, and the long ceremonial kumo has been called the “rarest and most treasured [of] t’nalak pieces.” When the anthropologist Cherubim Quizon asked about the meaning of the patterns, she found that contemporary weavers were much more concerned with the technical difficulty of the ikat. Weavers especially prize textiles whose patterns require a high number of thread bundles.