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The piningitan is a traditional wrap-around skirt worn by Tinguian or Itneg women in Abra, typically from adolescence to adulthood. The term comes from the root word pingit, meaning "on the edge," referring to the decorative edges of the skirt (Respicio, 2000). It is made of white woven textile panels with red-dyed threads at each corner. The longer sides (the weft ends) are woven in the same pattern as the white panels, while the shorter sides (the warp ends) use the brocade technique, resulting in more complex designs.
Unlike the everyday skirts worn by Tinguian women, the piningitan is worn during special occasions when the community gathers, such as the bedeng (a peace agreement between villages), pakalon or boda (wedding celebrations), lay-og (commemoration feasts for the dead), and other rituals for the ancestors (Respicio, 2000). While wearing the piningitan, women also participate in the traditional dance known as tadek (Respicio, 2000).
The piningitan features simple yet complex design elements that reflect both the skill of the weavers and the Tinguian people’s understanding of their environment. One such design, the binek-beklat, which looks like a python, is woven along the two warp edges of the skirt using black/indigo, red, and yellow threads in the brocade technique known as pinilian (Respicio, 2000). The binek-beklat is also referred to as tinultulbek or "key," representing the beginning and end of the weaving process (Respicio, 2000). Another motif, the inar-arabas, is a caterpillar-like pattern in red and indigo yarns, sewn in a staccato style between the white panels (Respicio, 2000). The weft edges, or inurlma, are dyed using natural plant-based pigments such as sapang for red, tayum for indigo, and wild ginger for yellow (Respicio, 2000).