I had the opportunity to accompany Active Travel’s Textile Tour group for a few days. South of Trongsa, we visited the Tarayana Foundation’s unique project that has revived the art of weaving cloth from the bark of stinging nettles.

The nettle bark requires quite a bit of processing to bring it to a weavable state, but even though the resulting fabric is a bit too stiff and rough to choose for clothing, it makes quite nice furnishing lengths with the addition of pretty motifs.

Preparing nettle fibre for spinning

Natural dyes, nettle bark and dyed nettle yarns