Huipil

Vervaardiging: Martina López Ortega

Woven huipil, a typical part of the Mexican costume. The huipil consists of three parts (strips) of undyed woven cotton, joined together with two bands of dark blue cotton. The middle strip has a hole in the middle with a diameter of 16 cm and this hole is surrounded with a yellow and a green ribbon, the yellow ribbon forms the base, with the green ribbon triangles are made on the yellow, with the points outwards. The ends of the ribbons are left long and fall along the fabric at the back of the huipil. The hole is used to put the head through and in this way the garment can be put on. The fabric is folded in two to create a front and back. At the bottom these two sides are sewn together over a length of approx. 20 cm, the rest remains open. On the undyed cotton extensive decorations have been embroidered in dyed wool and cotton. This is done in bands of approx. 2 cm wide over the width of the three strips, each band has two red lines as outer borders. When sewing the three strips together, not all of them ended up at the same height, so they are not straight across the entire length of the huipil. Because these are three strips that were later formed into a huipil, it is not so that the front and back of the huipil are equal. The patterns that are shown between the red lines are: small checks, diagonal hourglasses, vertical short bands (2 times same color with other color in between), checks in two colors (4 quarters), hourglasses between two checks of the same color, to the left diagonal stripes, open six-pointed stars, three small red checks above each other between two hourglasses of the same color, vertical stripes, open circles filled with another colour, to the left diagonal stripes (thick and thin), triangles with point up and down, triangles with point down and vertical stripe with above and below a straight line between two hourglasses of the same colour. Under the collar there is on both sides a wide band embroidered with vertical zigzag lines. On one of the sides a number of other bands are embroidered at the bottom, on the middle band a pink band of about 1 cm thick and on the two outer bands double bands in the colors pink and orange. There is a large variety of colors used for the embroidery, colors that are used are: different shades of red, blue, purple, different shades of green, orange, black, different shades of yellow and different shades of pink. This is a long huipil that reaches to the ankles.