My name is Caryn Maxim. I live in NJ but spend 2 weeks of each month in Cajola, a Maya Mam community in the western highlands of Guatemala. (The Mam people are one of the 22 Maya ethnic groups in Guatemala.) I have been helping a group of women start a weaving cooperative, MayaMam Weavers, over the past years. I would like to share with you some of their work, some of their stories, some of their wisdom, as well as why fair trade -- or trading fairly -- matters.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Creating New Weaving Patterns
We have been experimenting with new ways to thread our aviadura (a reed with string heddles). When we are preparing our loom to begin weaving, there are two very time-consuming parts. One is preparing the yarn by wrapping it around our warping wheel. The amount of time depends on the width of the fabric and whether there are stripes. And, if there are stripes, how many. The other challenging task is threading the string heddles. When we have learned one pattern of threading, we can obtain different weaving patterns depending on how we use our pedals. That is how we have changed the weave in our shawls. But now we have been experimenting now with different ways to string our string heddles. What do you think?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment