Kate Haydon works at Uare Taoka o Hākena Hocken Collections at Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka University of Otago. She completed her postgraduate study in Museums and Cultural Heritage at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. Her studies included MUSEUMS 702 Inside the Museum, a course taught onsite at Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum. This essay was first written as part of the coursework for MUSEUMS 702. Kate is a handweaver and has a particular research interest in textiles.

Hmong women have been handcrafting story cloths since the 1970s, combining centuries-old needlework practices with narrative art. Originating from the traditional paj ntaub (“flower cloth”) designs, story cloths emerged from significant geopolitical conflict, increased globalisation, and economic necessity to create a unique form of visual storytelling and cultural preservation. 

Preserving Hmong histories a stitch at a time

For centuries, Hmong women have practiced an embroidery style called paj ntaub that features abstract geometric designs related to their clan and regional ties. Consisting of brightly coloured needlework on black fabric, these "flower cloths" have played an integral part in Hmong culture and identity for thousands of years. Paj ntaub is incorporated into traditional clothing that is worn during New Years celebrations, marriages, births, and other significant events, as well as in daily life.¹

After the US withdrew and the war ended in 1975, the Hmong were violently targeted by the new North Vietnamese-backed Pathet Lao government. Approximately 100,000 Hmong undertook the dangerous journey through the jungle and across the Mekong River to Thailand, with only half surviving the journey.² Those who made it to Thailand settled in refugee camps to await resettlement in the United States, Australia, Europe or elsewhere in Asia. 

Embroidered storytelling

Contemporary story cloth designs first appeared at the Ban Vinai refugee camp in northern Thailand in the late 1970s and quickly spread to Hmong communities in other camps. Skilled embroiderers generated much needed income for their families while in the camps by producing and selling paj ntaub pieces. Relief and missionary workers at the camps were instrumental in organising global networks to market paj ntaub, with some advising the makers to tone down their traditionally bright colour palettes “to suit contemporary cosmopolitan tastes.”³ Through continuous innovation of designs and techniques, and with awareness of international appeal, the new story cloth style emerged. Hmong women used this form of embroidered storytelling to depict culturally important customs and tales, as well as scenes of their precarious existence in Laos and the refugee camps. 

The pictorial designs were driven by new creative collaborations between Hmong women and men, the latter of which had been taught to illustrate traditional folk tales by missionaries in the 1960s. Men would draw freehand onto the cloth, and the women would do the needlework. Differences in style and approach by each designer and maker meant there was significant variation in the finished product, even when the same stories are being depicted. 

Both paj ntaub and story cloths became a way for Hmong people to preserve their histories and important narratives to share with future generations throughout the diaspora. This was one way that Hmong could maintain community relationships in the face of forced global dispersal. The story cloth functions through visual storytelling to retain cultural narratives, embedded in what Mary Louise Buley-Meissner describes as an “intricate language” or “vocabulary” of stitches, including dozens of stitch varieties: cross, chain, satin, and running. Appliqué, reverse appliqué, and batik are also incorporated into designs.⁴ This process shows an adaptation from oral traditions of memory and recitation in rhymed verse to a new form of literacy using visual representations.⁵

Textiles and conflict

Hmong story cloths are an important representation of textiles being used by oppressed communities to navigate cultural change, continuity and identity. Several other textile traditions have also formed in response to war and conflict since the 1970s, like the arpilleras of Chile, the memory cloths of apartheid South Africa, and the quilts of Troubles-era Northern Ireland.⁶ These objects collectively speak to the potential of textiles as tools of advocacy and political influence, and as commemoration of oppression, trauma and resistance during conflict. Suzanne Bessac has argued that by sending their embroideries onto the world tourist market, “the Hmong are broadcasting their point of view and pleading their case in the court of public opinion.”⁷ 

The story of Yer and the Tiger

The story cloth that depicts the fable of Yer and the Tiger is one of a large collection of textiles purchased by Maureen Campbell-White (b.1942, Scotland) in the early 1980s, fourteen of which were donated to Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum in 2023. At the time of purchase, Maureen was a Chief Resettlement Officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), based at Khao I Dang refugee camp in Thailand. During Maureen’s extensive career in humanitarian aid, she also worked in Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Mozambique, Haiti, Croatia, South Lebanon, and Palestine. 

The traditional fable of Yer and the Tiger is a popular choice for story cloths. It retells the story of Yer, who has chosen to live with her sister in the jungle far from her village. A tiger disguises himself as her sister’s husband and kills him and his family, though Yer manages to fend him off and eventually returns home after being saved by her brothers. This story is considered a reminder that it is a bad idea to live far from others in your community.⁸ The border of this cloth references the traditional paj ntaub Laos mountain motif that symbolises strength and protection against outsiders. 

The English captions on this cloth make explicit the commercial intentions of the work. Story cloths are a record not only of Hmong experiences, but a record of the missionaries and international relief workers, like Maureen, involved in the informal economy of refugee handicraft. Aid workers from across the globe who worked with Hmong refugees in Thai camps purchased story cloths as souvenirs and to ship home to family and friends.  

Hmong refugees would also send their cloths to relatives already resettled in the United States, and elsewhere, who sold them on their behalf and kept them updated on consumer preferences. These global networks were instrumental to the commodification, circulation and popularity of story cloths in the 1980s and 1990s and highlight the influence of intercultural connections in the development of new art forms and techniques. 

Story cloths continue to be produced and sold at markets (in person and online) by women in the Hmong diaspora, but production of new cloths has reduced significantly since the 1990s, by which point most Thai refugee camps had closed. The story cloths held in Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial’s collection reflect Hmong experiences of forced migration, concern for cultural loss, and economic need, as well as the ability of textiles to both commemorate and advocate.

References 

[1] Repaskey, “Hmong Story Cloths,” 78. 

[2] Buley-Meissner, “Stitching the Fabric,” 235. 

[3] Peterson, “Translating Experience,” 7. 

[4] Buley-Meissner, “Stitching the Fabric,” 237. 

[5] Bessac, Embroidered Hmong Story Cloths, 17. 

[6] Nickell, ““Trouble Textiles,” 234. 

[7] Bessac, Embroidered Hmong Story Cloths, 29. 

[8] Bessac, Embroidered Hmong Story Cloths, 34-35. 

Further Reading 

• Bessac, Susanne L. Embroidered Hmong Story Cloths. University of Montana Department of Anthropology, 1988. 
• Buley-Meissner, Mary Louise. “Stitching the Fabric of Hmong Lives: The Value of Studying Paj Ntaub and Story Cloth in Multicultural Education.” In Hmong and American: From Refugees to Citizens, edited by Vincent K. Her and Mary Louise Buley-Meissner. Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/14675. 
• Nickell, Karen. “”Trouble Textiles”: Textile Responses to the Conflict in Northern Ireland.” Textile 13, no. 3 (2016): 234-251. https://doi.org/10.1080/14759756.2015.1084693. 
• Peterson, Sally. “Translating Experience and the Reading of a Story Cloth.” The Journal of American Folklore 101, no. 399 (1988): 6-22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/540246. 
• Repaskey, Lisa. “Hmong Story Cloths.” In Multiliteracies: Beyond Text and the Written Word, edited by Eugene F. Provenzo. Information Age Publishing, 2011. EBSCOhost. 

Cite this article

Haydon, Kate. Visual Storytelling with Hmong Story Cloths. Auckland War Memorial Museum - Tāmaki Paenga Hira. First published: 23 February 2026. Updated: 22 April 2026.
URL: www.aucklandmuseum.com/discover/collections/topics/Visual-Storytelling-with-Hmong-Story-Cloths