"Q" Gallery Courtyard

Oaxaca is a fixation of color, texture, visual excitement, and a feast for the senses. Fiber is my passion, so in my wanderings in search of great hand made paper jewelry, I found “Q” tucked away on M. Bravo No. 109. This is the most sensual, deliciously minimalist gallery in Oaxaca city. One extraordinary feature of “Q” is the courtyard filled with rows of ancient stones used for grinding maize, an artful sculptural display. In addition to gorgeous, very avant-garde fashion jewelry, they had the book Taller Flora by Carla Fernandez. Of course, I had to have it since it describes the indigenous techniques of transforming hand woven cloth into clothing – in both Spanish and English.

I’m in love with this book. Fernandez describes the various ways of putting webs (geometric shapes of cloth) together to create dresses, pants, skirts, blouses, shirts, sashes and jackets. She describes indigenous pre-Hispanic techniques for constructing garments, and compares this with western techniques. Westerners cut cloth to fit the body. Indigenous weavers feature the textile and, make few, if any, cuts into the cloth. Their clothing is loose fitting, comfortable, and easily adaptable to another future use. The weaving takes center stage.

Last summer, I eyed a piece of hand woven cloth tucked away on the bottom shelf in a shop in the city, bought it and took it home. It’s gloriously rich color spoke to me. I’ve been saving it and yesterday I decided to take it in hand and create a huipil.

Maize grinding stones

Imagine three long, rectangular pieces hand woven on a back-strap loom, each panel (web) 14-1/2” wide x 80” long and hand-stitched together, featuring intricate patterns of stars, birds, fish, crabs, lobster, bugs, deer, and rabbits. It is a brocaded piece from the coastal Mixtec village of Huazotitlan, Oaxaca. I don’t know for certain, but am assuming, that it is dyed with cochineal (red), indigo (blue) and caracol (purple) based on the price I paid for the cloth ($180 USD) that was not yet made up into anything!

Lovingly, I opened the seams and took apart the hand stitching, thinking about the women who created this fabric. How many were there? Were they mother and daughter? Dear friends or sisters? The 4-ply cotton seam threads went on for a while, were knotted off, the trailing thread tucked neatly into the next set of stitches that continued but were different. I could tell they were made by another hand. They were every bit as sturdy as any machine-made seam. I was deconstructing the panels because two panels would be sufficient to cover my body. I was able to create a huipil without making a single cut in the cloth. Here’s how I did it:

Weaving on a backstrap loom

With small basting stitches first, I sewed two panels together at the center seam, being sure to match the direction of the pattern in the weave. I ended the seam at the neck hole, measuring how big I wanted this to be so the garment would go over my head, creating a V-opening. I continued to baste from the hem toward the neck on the other side closing the seam the same amount of inches front to back. Then, I held the side seams together to see how much of an armhole I wanted. I decided on a 12” opening for the armhole. So I measured 12” from the shoulder fold down the side-seam, marked it with a straight pin, and began to baste from the hem going up toward the straight pin.

Not being an accomplished Mixtec seamstress, I took the fabric to the sewing machine and used a basting stitch to sew all the seams together. I decided not to make the machine stitches smaller because I didn’t want to ruin the brocade fabric and I wanted the flexibility to take the garment apart later in case I wanted to do something else with the material. Then, I steamed out all the seams with my iron (gently) so they laid flat. I finished the huipil by folding the bottom over into a ½” hem. The entire project took me about 3 hours. I didn’t need to finish off the neckline or armholes because the selvages are perfectly beautiful. I’m really pleased with how this turned out. I know that a huipil of this quality would cost $500+ in any shop in the Santo Domingo – Alcala de Macedeonia neighborhood!

What will I do with the remaining panel? I’m not sure yet. Perhaps a pillow cover is in order or I will fold it away and think about it again another day.

Norma Hawthorne is a North Carolina fiber and jewelry artist, and university administrator, who writes about Oaxaca and living in Teotitlan del Valle on her blog oaxacaculture.wordpress.org and website www.oaxacaculture.com She is currently organizing weaving and natural dyeing workshops with Federico Chavez Sosa and Eric Chavez Santiago in Teotitlan del Valle.