Our Kitchen Towels

Our popular emerald striped kitchen towels have been woven in a traditional Cajolá pattern typically used to wrap tortillas or bread or carry gifts of food from one family to another. However, we have woven the towels as a much finer cloth. And the earthtone stripes were created as a complementary color way.
The diamonds embroidered on the border of the towels represent the process of life -- birth (the red center), life (green), illness (yellow), and finally death (purple).

Learning to Run Our Business

Of course trying to earn a living from our textiles is not just about weaving, sewing, and embroidery! We have to learn about running our business. And, because working in a cooperative is very important to us, we also have to learn how to have a successful cooperative. On the business end of things we are learning about product development, planning, how to calculate the cost of our products, how to sell (we are trying to develop a market here in Guatemala as well as in the U.S.) -- among other things. The photo shows us learning how to use the internet. Our teachers were some students visiting us from
Ramapo College!

On the cooperative side, in the photo below we are learning how to write minutes of a meeting. It may not sound so difficult to you, but most of us have not been to school and have had to learn to read and write as adults. (We do have literacy classes at work four days a week.) And the majority of us have not been given a chance to lead in groups, so we need to learn practical things such as how to write minutes.

Our Embroidered Tote Bags Mean Something!

We designed our embroidered tote bags to incorporate our backstrap weaving and its traditional motifs as accents. The motifs have been handed down from our ancestors, who we call “the grandparents”. They are very rich with meaning. Truthfully, we don’t always understand the meanings any more, but our Maya spiritual guides still do.

You can see an example of one of our embroideries in the photo below. If you study it, you will be able to see three different symbols. We don’t think of these as symbols so much as “energies”. Hopefully you can identify a serpent, a pair of owl’s eyes, and two pyramids (one pointing up and one pointing down (all intertwined). The serpent’s energy is about wisdom and fertility. The owl’s energy is about choosing good paths, reflection and recovery, and communication. And the pyramids represent the energy we call Tijax, the earth below and the sky above, as well as the entries to the world below and to the world above.

Each of our tote bags has different embroideries. You are always welcome to ask about the meaning of other ones.

MayaMam Weavers and the Royal Ascot

Well, we didn’t actually attend the Royal Ascot...

For those of you not in the know, the Royal Ascot is an annual horseracing event attended by the Queen of England along with members of her family on the Ascot Racecourse, which property also belongs to the Crown

...but we are proud to say that Brian Main, Executive Director of Feed the Children U.K, did attend the event, wearing one of our handsome red vests (or waistcoats, as the English say). This fabric had been designed to cover the cushions of our ergonomic benches, but has been so admired by everyone that sees it that we have been thinking of other products that might incorporate it.
And, the vest was the first product. You can see in the photo below how the vest-waistcoat complemented Brian’s morning dress and top hat beautifully.

Don’t you agree?