At Sara Textiles in Chinchero, our guide with her daughter, and showing off one of the bones the weavers use to lift the warp threads on a loom—which she joked came from her ex-husband.
Showing posts with label textiles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label textiles. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Saturday, June 24, 2023
Weaving
Weaving using a backstrap loom. It will take her more than forty hours of work to finish this piece.
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Giving it a spin
All of the washing, dying, spinning and weaving is done by hand. The shampoo is a grated root they jokingly referred to as “Inca shampoo,” and they only use natural dyes, mostly from roots and herbs plus cochineal from insects. I was especially fascinated by the dyes, and how many colors it is possible to produce using plants. If I ever want to take up another craft, I would love to try playing with natural dyes.
On the other hand, I have actually tried spinning using a hand spindle like these and I never managed to produce anything resembling yarn. So although it was fun to see experts in action, that's not something I'm likely to try again.
On the other hand, I have actually tried spinning using a hand spindle like these and I never managed to produce anything resembling yarn. So although it was fun to see experts in action, that's not something I'm likely to try again.
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Speaking of textiles
One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to one of the weaving cooperatives in Chinchero, a small town in the mountains about an hour from Cusco.
Chinchero is famous for its textiles, and is a center for using and promoting traditional techniques. The cooperative we visited, Sara Textiles, was formed by a group of single mothers. Our visit began with meeting (and feeding) the alpacas and llamas who supply the wool, and ended in the adjoining shop, where scarves, coats, hats, and wall hangings in every color of the rainbow are for sale.
And in between, we saw how the raw wool is washed, spun, dyed and woven to create those masterpieces.
Patchwork
I've been going through pictures and trying to figure out how to talk about this trip. I slept well last night, and definitely feel more like myself today, but when I looked at all the unprocessed photos and thought about what to say about them, I just got tired.
So I'm just going to pick pictures randomly and talk about them—a Peruvian patchwork.
Not unlike this textile from the Museo Larco in Lima. I loved reading about the Incas when I was a kid, but I never realized how short-lived the Empire was, really only a hundred years from Pachicuti to Pizarro. And before this trip I knew very little about the pre-Incan cultures. This textile represents a fusion of two of those cultures, the Nasca and the Huari, and dates from around 800 AD. The Inca ruins are incredible, but they're only a small part of the history and culture of Peru.
Monday, February 27, 2017
Welcome to the working week
Lunchtime at a textile company in Jaipur.
One problem with taking any kind of tour is all of the shops they manage to include, where in addition to learning about traditional crafts you have the opportunity to spend large amounts of money. Not that there's any obligation, of course. It's all educational.
It's purely coincidental that several of my co-workers now own hand-printed textiles from Jaipur.
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