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Originally Posted by FancyStar
Why do you dance buckskin instead of cloth? What is it about this dance style that you love the most and that makes you do this style instead of another?
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OKI,
My mother got me started in all this . She has an excellant memory when it comes to making dresses and what a person is supposed to make them of. We have as traditional Blackfeet dresses as we can have today. Some are made buckskin, some are cloth, some are velvet. Some are made of a wool cloth that's called stroud cloth and then there's a wool trade cloth too.
Sometimes dresses are made of a calico cotton and sometimes of brocade, which is hard to get. Our grandma had one once made of a taffeta material.
This may sound like "anything goes" when making a Blackfeet woman's dress. It doesn't, each cloth goes with a different type of dress. You don't mix them up.
When it's time to dress up, I'll wear my buckskin and sometimes I wear one of those many "cloth" types. They all had their places in a traditional Blackfeet woman's life, which my mother and I try our best to continue to make.