Oaxaca Coast Textile Study Tour: Discover the Mixteca Baja
Arrive on Tuesday, December 2, and depart on Wednesday, December 10, 2025 — 8 nights, 9 days in textile heaven! Home in time for winter holiday preparations. Please send us an email to tell us you are ready to join! December is a perfect time to visit the Oaxaca coast. The weather is at its […]
Mother’s Day Tidbits + New in the Shop
Mother’s Day, started by social activist Anna Jarvis in the early 20th century to honor her own mother, has now become the second most popular holiday in the United States for gift-giving, following Christmas. Groups of mothers whose sons had fought or died on opposite sides of the American Civil War were involved in the […]
San Andres Larrainzar and Magdalena Aldama, Chiapas: Textiles, A Conduit to Culture
Our last road trip on the Chiapas Textile Tour: Deep Into the Maya World takes us to the Maya highlands villages of San Andres Larrainzar and Magdalena Aldama. Many feel that both these villages produce some of the most outstanding textiles of the region. Here, we visit extended family cooperatives where both women and men […]
From San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas: Textile Sale
My modus operandi is to visit the homes and cooperatives of the finest weavers wherever I travel in Mexico and elsewhere. I can’t possibly wear everything I love. But that does not deter me from buying to support what they do. We hear time and again from weavers on our textile tours that the pandemic […]
San Juan Colorado, Oaxaca, Where Textiles Tell Stories
San Juan Colorado is up the mountain about an hour-and-half from Pinotepa Nacional along the Costa Chica. It’s at the end of the road, so secluded that the Spanish Conquest and proselytizing priests didn’t reach here until much later. It’s why traditional backstrap loom weaving and natural dyeing have survived over the years. Mostly women […]
Collectibles and Wearables: Artisan Made and For Sale
My tradition is to look through my collection and offer distinctive pieces for sale just before I leave Oaxaca to return for visits to the USA. Most pieces are new and never worn, collected as part of my commitment to support artisans where I travel. A few are part of my personal wardrobe, rarely used, […]
Where Flowers Grow on Cloth: Flor de Xochistlahuaca
The Amusgo people span the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero in the mountain region of the Costa Chica between Puerto Escondido and Acapulco. They are back-strap loom weavers of an extraordinary garment called the huipil. This particular textile is fine gauze cotton, a loose weave, to offer comfort to the hot, humid climate. Even in […]
Textil_Zacoalpan, Ometepec, Guerrero — Rescuing Ancient Cloth
In my search to find another weaving group to visit near Xochistlahuaca, Guerrero, I stumbled upon 23-year-old Ignacio Gomez on Instagram. He is using the social media site to promote Textil_Zacoalpan. What stood out in the photos were the use of natural dyes and the native cotton — coyuchi brown, verde green, and the creamy […]
Oaxaca expoVENTA: San Felipe Usila Textiles for Muertos
Pop-Up expoVENTA coming Oct. 29-30, from the land of the Dance of the Flor de Piña (of Guelaguetza fame) and those exquisite huipiles of San Felipe Usila, a remote village high in Oaxaca’s Papaloapan region near Tuxtepec, 8 hours from Oaxaca City. Jose Isidro and his mama, will come from their village with hand-woven textiles at […]
Evaristo Borboa, Tenancingo, Mexico Rebozos on the Backstrap Loom
Evaristo Borboa Casas is an 89 year old weaver from Tenancingo de Degollado in the Estado de Mexico (state of Mexico). I met him on Saturday during a whirlwind visit to four rebozo makers, most of whom work on the flying shuttle loom. Except for Evaristo! He said when he was a six-year old boy […]
Mexico Textiles Brief: In Transit to Tenancingo
MEXICO CITY, Thursday, September 3, 2015–Today is an interlude in Mexico City as I travel between Oaxaca and Tenancingo, the ikat rebozo capital of Mexico. I’m joining Los Amigos de los Artes Populares de Mexico, a group collectors and appreciators of Mexican Folk Art. We are traveling together to meet the grand masters of Mexican […]
Pop-up Expoventa San Felipe Usila Saturday Only
Textile show and sale from San Felipe Usila When: 1:30-4:30 pm, Saturday, March 7, 2015 Where: Las Granadas B&B, Avenida 2 de Abril #9, Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca What: think Danza de la Pina — Dance of the Pineapple– at The Guelaguetza to picture what these garments look like San Felipe Usila is a […]
Zinacantan Textile Flowers, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas
They speak Tzotzil here in the Maya highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. San Lorenzo Zinacantan is a village nestled in a beautiful valley about thirty minutes from San San Cristobal de Las Casas. It is a popular Sunday tourist destination combined with a visit to the mystical church at San Juan Chamula (which I will write about […]
Penland School of Crafts in Ocotlan de Morales, Oaxaca
Our Penland School of Crafts group travels through Oaxaca arts and artisan villages this week. One destination is the regional town of Ocotlan de Morales where we met artist Rodolfo Morales through the murals he painted in the municipal building during the mid-century. These frescoes depict the rich agricultural tradition of the Ocotlan valley and […]
Chiapas Textile Cooperative to Exhibit and Sell at Oaxaca Textile Museum
After calling ahead and making an appointment, we took a taxi to the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Casas at the end of a dirt road to find the headquarters of Camino de los Altos. This is a cooperative of 130 weavers who make extraordinary textiles. They will be exhibiting and selling their work […]
Book Review: Weaving, Culture and Economic Development in Miramar, Oaxaca, Mexico
Book: Weaving Yarn, Weaving Culture, Weaving Lives: A Circle of Women in Miramar, Oaxaca, Mexico; published by Almadia, 2010; photography by Tom Feher, text by Judith Lockhart-Radtke; ISBN: 978-607-411-059-3 Book Review by Norma Hawthorne Stunning photographs and intimate personal interviews of indigenous Mixtec women weavers accentuate what it means to keep culture, community, and weaving […]
Whirlwind Day Two Shopping in Oaxaca — If it’s Friday, it must be Ocotlan
Sheri picked us up in her white van at the pre-determined 9 a.m. hour, early by Oaxaca standards, though the streets were already abuzz with honking vehicles. Our first stop was the ATM (exchange rate 13.12 pesos to the dollar) to stock up again for the day long adventure down the Ocotlan highway. We passed […]
Remigio Mestas: Textile Museum of Oaxaca Exhibition
“Remigio Mestas: A Mirror on the Rich Textiles of Oaxaca” Exhibition at the Museo Textil de Oaxaca November 9, 2008 to February 16, 2009 Here is an exhibition you won’t want to miss if you are in Oaxaca through mid-February. Sr. Remigio Mestas has an incredible shop in the arcade next to Los Danzantes Restaurant […]
You Can’t Make a Silk Purse Out of a Sow’s Ear
I’m not sure about that! Oaxaqueno artists are VERY creative. In Teotitlan del Valle and throughout the Oaxaca Valley master weavers produce extraordinary art pieces that are created from the mere fibers of sheep wool and cotton plants. Designs are intricately detailed, as you can see below. And, even the smallest piece can take hours […]
Sewing Lesson: Making a Huipil From Indigenous Cloth
I’m in love with the book, Taller Flora by Carla Fernandez. In it she describes the various ways of putting webs (geometric shapes of cloth–squares, rectangles, triangles) together to create dresses, pants, skirts, blouses, shirts, sashes and jackets. Fernandez describes indigenous pre-Hispanic techniques for constructing garments, and compares this with western techniques. Westerners cut cloth […]