Hand woven textiles

I have a passion for textiles and a "slight" addiction to ebay where I get most of them. I love hand woven textiles, I discovered them during a trip to my husband's native Chile, I saw some beautiful, colorful pieces that I could not afford at the time. On my way back I started looking for them on the internet and I just fell in love with this wonderful art.

In South America it is an exclusively feminine art, women handle the whole process :the spinning of the wool, the dyeing process and the weaving. Women have to weave in a peaceful environment since it is believed that their emotions are weaved togeher with the wool into the pieces they create. Those wonderful and unique pieces are considered sacred because of the lengthy work and the involvement of the artist's emotions, all the patterns and designs are particular to the different groups of people as they indicate details of their history and every day life. It is considered a sacrilege to cut pieces that were weaved in such a fashion. The first piece I purchased includes sheep and alpaca wool, it seems to be from Cochabamba (if I trust my ebay seller to be a reliable source) and it is an awayo, these square pieces of wool textile were used in everyday life to carry bundles of wool, wood or other commodities as well as to tie babies on their mother's backs, it is everything I love, it involves colors, feminine activities and babies....If you look at the traditional weavings all over the world they always involve very bright colors, for me bright colors translate to happiness. A lot of Andean weavings are sold as made of alpaca wool, the truth is that most of them are actually made of sheep wool, Alpaca wool is 7 times warmer and twice as fine as sheep wool, it is harder to process and dyes don't hold well on it, it is most often left to its original brown tone color.

When searching on ebay for beautiful pieces the best deals are found in the adds that are miscategorized, ( the seller does not know what he is selling thus he does not know its true value.)

You can regularly find nice pieces from Peru, Bolivia or Guatemala described as "mexican.")

It is hard to know the fiber content of a textile without touching it, I was sold blankets and tablecloths said to be cotton when they were polyester and vice versa. Mexican blankets often carry a labels that says 100% cotton or 100% polyester even thought the blankets are almost always a blend of both. You can do the burn test to have a better idea of the fiber content. When shopping on ebay I would recommend to always expect the worst and not to invest large amounts of money.

Hand embroidered piece from Guatemala

Here is a link to a beautiful site about peruvian weavers:

http://threadsofperu.com/alpaca-and-wool/

Wax printed fabrics.

I just added another pop of color to my living room with some beautiful pillows covered with African wax fabric, I love these colorful patterns, they awaken memories of a part of my childhood spent in Gabon (west Africa.) The story behind the "wax fabric" is interesting as it was unexpectedly created in Holland using the batik method originally from Indonesia. As the Dutch had colonies in Indonesia they decided to create a cheaper version of the Indonesian batik fabric using a cheaper industrialized method they planned to sell the fabrics in Indonesia, along the way the Ships would stop in Africa and they started selling the fabrics in Africa, it happens that their fabrics were better received in Africa than in Indonesia, the fabrics were then adapted to local demand by creating more colorful and more inricate designs. The trade of fabrics in Africa was for a long time reserved to upper class women, the license to sell the imported fabric would be passed from mother to daughter. The fabrics often represent everyday objects, and the locals gave them special names and meaning creating new traditions with this imported products and including them in their local culture by the same token. Nowadays some factories create wax fabric in west Africa, though the quality is not as good as the dutch product, it is made using the same technic.

The genuine wax fabrics can be identify by the fact that the pattern is printed on both side of the fabric and by all the small imperfections caused by the wax cracking during the dyeing process. The small dots and trails of dye resulting from the cracking wax create the uniqueness of the fabric, even though the main pattern is repeated it is never identical. I purchased fabric from ebay, even thought it is risky to purchase the fabric without seeing it, another good source for pillows and other kind of interesting textiles is www.fabricadabra.us/‎

Happy!

by Minty LaVendy

Hand woven textiles

Wax printed fabrics.