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Saturday, July 21, 2018

Guatemala - natural dyeing in San Juan La Laguna

In May, I took a week off from my weaving classes, and snuck away for a quick trip to Guatemala. The trip was organized by Thread Caravan, and I can't say enough good things about them. If you are interested in learning about the Guatemalan Mayan culture and textiles, I would wholeheartly recommend a Thread Caravan trip. They also offer trips to Oaxaca, Mexico and Panama. It really was a wonderful get away - the places we stayed at in Antigua and at Lake Atitlan were both outstanding, but I wasn't just there for fun and relaxation, I wanted to learn about the Mayan textile traditions, and I got LOTS of that too. 
chilka dye pot
We spent a day with the Lema Association in San Juan La Laguna learning about dyieng with local plants. We used "chilka" to get yellow - those would be the leaves in the first photo; they smelled a lot like chamomile but they are from a large leafy shrub like plant). We used"achiote" also known as annatto for orange - this was a paste made from the seeds of a fruit; it is also used as a spice to flavour and colour food. The blue is not indigo, it is called "sacatinta" and is from the wood of a tree. It dyed the cotton yarn that they had a beautiful blue colour, but my scarf came out purple.
taking the yarn out of the dye pot

preparing the chilka leaves


achiote dye
sacatinta is supposed to be a blue dye. No idea why this scarf came out purple








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