RESEARCH DATA:

The piningitan is a traditional wrap-around skirt worn by Tinguian or Itneg women, from early teens to adulthood, in Abra. Its name comes from the root word pingit, meaning “on the edge,” referring to the embellishments along the skirt’s edges (Respicio, 2000). The skirt’s design features plain white woven panels with red-dyed woven threads at each corner. The longer sides are woven in the same style as the white panels, while the shorter sides are crafted using the brocade technique, resulting in more intricate designs.
Unlike common skirts, the piningitan is worn on special occasions such as peace agreements between villages (bedeng), weddings (pakalon or boda), commemoration feasts for deceased relatives (lay-og), and rituals for ancestors (Respicio, 2000). When wearing the piningitan, women also take part in the traditional dance called tadek (Respicio, 2000).
The piningitan’s design highlights the weavers' skills and reflects how the Tinguian people understood their surroundings. One notable pattern, the binek-beklat, resembles a python and is woven along the two warp edges (Respicio, 2000). It is made of black/indigo, red, and yellow threads using the pinilian technique, a supplementary weft weaving technique (Respicio, 2000). The binek-beklat is also known as tinultulbek or "key," signifying the starting and ending points of the weaving process (Respicio, 2000). Another design element, the inar-arabas, is a caterpillar-like pattern in red and indigo yarns, sewn in a staccato pattern between the three white panels (Respicio, 2000). Lastly, the weft edges, known as inurlma, are dyed using natural pigments, such as sapang for red, tayum for indigo, and wild ginger for yellow (Respicio, 2000).