Guatemala Artisan Handmade Products

In the pre-Columbian era, Mayan women exclusively wove with backstrap looms, which used sticks and straps worn around one’s waist to create tension. After European contact, treadle looms were introduced, although backstrap looms continued to be popular.

Guatemala Artisan Handmade Products

Ethical Fashion in Guatemala: Empowering Guatemalan Women Artisans

Guatemalan Artisan Products are one-of-a-kind handcrafted, organic, and natural products such as:

Purses, bags, shawls, scarves, huipiles, serapes, tablecloths, place-mats, leather boots, backpacks, bedspreads, and much more.

What is a custom design?

A custom or customized design is something built to a specific order.

A fitting example of custom design is a ‘custom-made solar bag carrier on the right where the product is created as directed by the company we supply this service for.

The client usually gives directions or asks the designer for their suggestion to create something unique.

Ethical Fashion Guatemala provides a variety of custom textiles and prototype projects for Fashion Designers around the world.

Maya textiles are the clothing and other textile arts of the Maya peoples, and indigenous peoples of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Belize.

Women have traditionally created textiles in Maya society, and textiles were a significant form of ancient Maya art and religious beliefs.

Mayan Textile production

The weavers start with cotton or bamboo; white and brown raw cotton
The cotton is hand spun and then dyed using roots, bark, herbs, and other plant-based products
Banana bark is used to set the dye preventing the textile from running or fading.

Back-strap Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth
Weaving a Shawl such as the examples depicted on this page can take up to a week of Weaving time using the Back Strap Loom. This time does not include the preparation of the yarns to produce a Shawl.