Blankets under the pinilian description are textiles woven with pre-selected warp threads that produce brocade weaves or designs that appear floating on the cloth’s surface. Pinilian also refers to the supplementary weft technique employed in textile weaving using either continuous or discontinuous supplementary weft yarns (Pastor-Roces, 1991). The use of the latter is called inlaid, locally termed as insukit or inkaot in Ilocos (Respicio, 2014).


In this textile, the insukit is used to produce diamond motifs in red and yellow colors which are geometric representations of crabs (sinan-agatul or agkammang). According to Respicio and Yoshikawa-Zialcita (2020), designs woven in alternating colors are attainable because of this technique (p. 189). They also appear scattered on a plain ground weave or background of the blanket, as opposed to those made using continuous supplementary weft yarns, which look like designs arranged in rows (Respicio, 2000). Depictions of crab reflect the rich riverine life of the Itneg and their practice of fishing in their large rivers. As part of the finishing touches, the blanket ends with a fringed border, which is locally known as the pulikos.