The women in Guatemala often use raw cotton when weaving textiles. They must first prepare the cotton by picking out the seeds, cleaning it, and then beating it with forked sticks. Then they can spin it into yarn and dye the threads with natural dyes: indigo to produce blue colors, cochineal for red, etc.
Women in Guatemala begin weaving by creating a ‘warp’ out of yarn. They wind the yarn around pegs on a warping board, crossing the strings in the middle to create a striped pattern. The warp is then attached to the bars of the loom and they are ready to begin the weaving process.
The Guatemalan women in this photo are wearing folded up ‘tzutes’ on their heads to shade their faces.
Lidia Lopez describing the meanings of the patterns on a huipil from Patzicia, Guatemala.
This Guatemalan woman and her daughters are all dressed in traditional clothing.
The women of Guatemala have worn the same traditional dress (called ‘traje’) for centuries. They have passed down the art of weaving these textiles through many generations.
This little girl from Guatemala is wearing traditional clothing and carrying worry dolls.