It is not known when the people of Arunanchal Pradesh learnt the art of weaving. According to one of the myths, the art of weaving was learnt in a dream from the goddess Podi Barbi. A Galo song narrates a full story of how the cotton is grown, plucked, spun and how it is woven with cotton yarn in a loom. The song, which is sung with the dance by village belles, narrates that in the olden days when the cotton was not grown and the people had not enough clothes, they started the cultivation of cotton. Thus, weaving among the people of Arunachal Pradesh is as old as the story itself. The people knew of clothes as a means of protecting themselves against the rigours of the climate. The women of this area are good weavers and they have a good colour choice and artistic designs of their own.

The colour and design have their symbolic meaning among some tribes of the state. The use of certain kinds of clothes and ornaments is often associated with a family's social position and achievements in the fields of hospitality and war. Though there has not been much external influence on the designs of the fabrics in Arunachal Pradesh, there have been some borrowing of motifs from neighbouring areas. The motifs, designs and patterns, however are quite complex and their symbolic meaning and usages rather significant. The elaborate processes of spinning, dying and finally weaving remind us of the rich discoveries of the women, who were supposed to weave respective clothes for their families. The different tribes of Arunachal Pradesh have different weaving patterns and designs having their own symbolic meaning and legends associated with them.

Precedure: The work of seed cleaning is a tedious process which is done either by old women or by a cotton ginning machine consisting of two wooden rollers geared to revolve in opposite directions and turn by the crack with the right hand. The clean cotton is gently rolled by hand with the help of round stick over a flat stone or plank into saussage-like shape. This cotton is ready to be spun into thread with the help of a primitive spindle. It consists of a pin of bamboo sticks tapering into fine point at the top and about the thickness of a pencil near the bottom. Once the threads are ready into yarn, the dying process takes place after the yarn has been transferred into skeins. Dying of clothes or threads is exclusively performed by women and during this period they refrain from sex and must not eat beaf, dog flesh, mutton, dried fish, and other such items with strong odours.