Kesi is a special type of weaving peculiar to China. It is different from embroidery but rather similar to the making of tapestry.
It is done on a wooden handloom with raw silk as the warp and boiled-off silk as weft. The weft threads are usually of dozens of colors and are separately reeled in many small shuttles. First the artisan makes on the warp a sketchy drawing of the pattern to be woven and then guides a shuttle with the weft thread of a special color across the warp threads – almost never through the entire width but only where that particular color is needed. So, this is a form of weaving patch by patch. One could also say it represents an integration of the silk-weaving and painting. It is necessary to make frequent changes of the shuttles (i.d. threads of different colors), and a small piece of work requires thousands of changes to finish.
The art has its beginnings in the Han and Wei dynasties but blossomed during the Song (960-1279), producing a great master in Zhu Kerou. The art of kesi was introduced to japan during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The belt of the Japanese kimono, which is woven in this way, is still called by the Japanese “Chinese Ming decorative belt”.
Natural dyes from plants were the only dyes used until the 19th century; they produce attractive shades and, have good fastness characteristics and to light, if properly cared for.
Tapestries were ubiquitous in the castles and churches of the late medieval and Renaissance eras. At a practical level, they provided a form of insulation and decoration that could be easily transported. In addition, the process of tapestry weaving, where every stitch is placed by hand, enabled the creation of complex images on an enormous scale. 
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The Bayeux tapestry, probably made in England around 1070 is considered to be the most distinguished example of preserved textile pictorial art from Norman times.
I design tapestries and hand-weave them on vertical looms in my