Three thousand five hundred years ago, a group of nomads of the Middle East followed their herds and their monotheistic religious traditions. Their place of worship is described as a Holy Tabernacle. The sewing pattern - rather than a blue print - is set forth in Exodus 25-27 of the Old Testament. These shepherd families had come out of the territories ruled by Egyptian Pharaohs, and had entered a desert place where their herds could wander and their leaders could receive the religious laws that still govern that society.
Included in the system of beliefs handed down from Yahweh from a mountain in this desert were the instructions for fabricating the Holy Tabernacle. He described the supporting timbers, the metal fittings, and the protective outer layers of animal skins. But the interior of this tent - the tabernacle - Yahweh required that it be mainly of woven materials. Exodus 25:4 describes the cloth, "And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goat's hair..."
Blue linen is the first fabric named. This mobile community had to create this special cloth. Linen comes from the flax plant which has first been soaked and well-rotted; only then can the fibers be separated into strips, then drawn out and twisted (spun) into thread. The process is labor-intensive in the extreme and the spinning of the fiber requires the knowledge of special techniques. It is possible that these skills were perfected during the time that the nomads had lived in Egypt, where the fabrication of linen was highly developed from much earlier times.
After the rigors of creating the yarn, the textile artist was then required to dye the yarn in specific colors. The specifications were for 10 curtains (interior panels) made of blue, purple and red (scarlet), presumably woven from yarns in these three colors, or possibly from yarns that had all been dyed in the same vat wherein the blue and red dyestuffs were combined to create purple.
Dyestuffs were items of trade, and the material that made naturally-colored linen turn blue was available on the trade routes out of India: indigo. Making an indigo vat-dyeing operation for great lengths of cloth to serve as the interior panels of the tabernacle was a second very laborious task with which to burden this mobile community. Indigo "recipes" have always been carefully guarded secrets. (Just ask Levi-Strauss, the best-known modern user of indigo for creating that distinctive "blue jeans" color).
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