Cute Little Girls With Their Birds

This is possibly the sweetest huipil collar I've seen yet. It's completely hand-embroidered and features a little girl and a bird in each corner. Sometimes the hand-embroidered collars are more crude in their stitches, but you can tell the woman who made this one really took her time.

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Sale update: The jewelry sale is going great, with 11 pieces of jewelry sold so far. Still 2 1/2 days left!

Huge Jewelry Sale!

I have marked down all my jewelry* 20%-25% between now and the end of Monday, December 1!

As always, every jewelry item comes with a Guatemalan fabric gift bag.

Check out my Eco-Friendly Seed Jewelry section and my Fun Ceramic Jewelry section for a total of 53 pieces of jewelry on sale! Choose from earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and sets starting at only $3.50 :)

*except for one piece: the custom girls' bracelet

San Pedro Sacatepequez

The huipiles from San Pedro Sacatepequez have a very dense weave and are very colorful. The ceremonial versions are white with purple and red. Here's an everyday use huipil from San Pedro that I got last week. More photos of San Pedro textiles are here.

Amazing Hand Embroidered Collar

This round, scalloped huipil collar is hand embroidered with large flowers and two birds. I love the detail of the birds - And this collar is very soft!

San Andres Xecul

I found a great huipil from San Andres Xecul, made on commercial white eyelet fabric. It has the traditional animal designs machine embroidered around the collar and sleeves and is just beautiful!

Blusas from Coban

I purchased these blusas (blouses) from Coban for a customer. Coban blusas are often made of commercial lightweight fabric like lace or eyelet and have beautiful hand embroidery and knotting around the collars and sleeves. The style of the flowers is called rococo.

Reina de los Barriletes

Santiago Sacatepequez is the village known for its giant kites flown in the cemetary on All Saints' Day/Day of the Dead (Nov 1 and 2). They have other festivities leading up to the big holiday, including the crowning of the Reina de los Barriletes (Queen of the Kites), and these photos are from this year's parade. Notice all the people wearing their Santiago Sacatepequez traje. It's easy to see that traje is very important to one's identity in Guatemalan villages.

Mexican Paper Dolls

I found the cutest little Mexican paper dolls at a local shop. They are mini books, only 4 1/4" x 5 3/4". One is a traditional cut-out paper doll book, with eight costumes from around Mexico, and the other is a sticker book with four pages of clothing and accessories.

Mural in Santiago Sacatepequez

This mural is painted on an upstairs wall in the museum in Santiago Sacatepequez. It depicts a 16th century battle between the Spanish conquistadors and indigenous Guatemalans. At the bottom it says: Memoria Historica y Cultural de Guatemala (Historical and Cultural Memory of Guatemala).

Santiago Sacatepequez

I went to Santiago Sacatepequez on Saturday for their Day of the Dead giant kite festival (more on that later!) and looked around their local museum. Inside they have a model of a woman at a backstrap loom, weaving her huipil. The huipil from Santiago is an abstract design in bright red, with splashes of dark blue, light purple, orange, and green also woven in.