Guatemalan Ikat Corte buy - Cranberry

This is a traditional piece of Guatemalan corte fabric. It is 34-inches wide and 4 yards long.

This fabric has a beautiful drape. It would make a gorgeous skirt or top. It is also perfect for putting into a quilt. This corte has been upcycled, but is really in excellent shape. The last picture shows a group of young ladies in the Independence Day celebration in La Antigua, Guatemala wearing buy traditional Mayan clothing.

Sometimes when I list a fabric on etsy or show it on facebook, I call it “corte.” I thought I'd take the time to explain what corte is and show some pictures of it.

In Guatemala the women wear rectangular panels of fabric as skirts. The fabric is hand-woven on a foot loom. It can be between 4 and 7 yards long. They then sew the ends together to form a tube shape that the wrap around themselves making a skirt. Sometimes narrow panels are sewn together and the seam is hidden by embroidery work which is called a “randa.” The woman steps into the skirt and wraps it around herself and ties it at the top with a hand woven belt. Some villages have a system of pleating or gathering the fabric and some just wear the skirt straight.
The corte that has a design woven into it is done by a method called “jaspe.” In English we call it “ikat.” It is done by weaving with threads that have been tie-dyed to make the pattern. The patterns are incredible. Traditionally, each pueblo had its corte just like it had its guipil (traditional blouse). The corte is normally made of cotton and now days a lot of it has metallic threads running through it. A lot of the corte fabric comes from the towns of Salcaja and Totonicapan. Some towns, of course, have weavers who also make their town's corte.

Check out more great Guatemalan fabrics in my etsy shop: www.etsy.com/shop/spanglishfabrics

You can also find other Guatemalan artisan pieces at www.spanglishfabrics.com

you can also find Spanglish Fabrics on facebook.