Caption Reads: Elegant Sewing, Weaving, and Embroidering With Quills
The porcupine, found in all but the most northerly parts of the Subaretic, provided many of the people of the region with one of their most valuable decorative materials: quills. Every porcupine has more than 30,000 of these darts, some as long as five inches and as thick as an eighth of an inch. When a porcupine was killed, the women pulled out the quills, sorting them by size, washing and then drying them, and dying them with colors obtained from bloodroot, wild plum bark, blueberries, and other plants. Next they were softened, either by soaking them in water or holding them in the mouth. Some quills might then be flattened into ribbons by pulling them between fingernails or teeth. This done, the quills were ready to be worked- sewn, woven, or embroidered on a base material.