Museum of America in Madrid

I spent a week in Madrid last month and had a wonderful time.  One of the unexpected delights is the Museum of  America.  If you get the opportunity to visit Madrid, do go to this museum. Click here for their web site to view the collection. The site is in Spanish.  http://www.mecd.gob.es/museodeamerica/coleccion.html

This stunning museum has a magnificent collection of textiles from South America.  I was fortunate to be there at the same time as an exhibition of a selection of their collection of Huipils. Fortunately the exhibition dates had been extended.

Here is a flavour of the colours.

The vibrant stripes are a wonder.  Colours that I would not usually put together look stunning.

Vibrant stripes

The book about the museum collection was only available in Spanish but worth buying. It is listed on the museum web site.

Tradición de tradiciones  by María Jesús Jiménez Díaz   2006  ISBN 978-84-8181-386-9
published by Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid

All textiles are a good source of inspiration.  The huipils are usually woven in warp faced weave so the lovely stripes can be examined in detail.  Choose an area that you like and make up a pattern. 

close up of Huipil

graph for narrow band

For this band of 37 warp ends. I used a double thread in the centre so that the deep pink would show more clearly.  I wanted a narrow band so I reduced the pattern. 

Here is the band I wove./  I used 16/2 cotton so the band is very narrow. 

I made part of the band into a bookmark.

Here is another lovely book with lots of inspirational pictures to help with stripe design.

Textiles from Guatemala by Ann Hecht 2001  British Museum Press ISBN  0-7141-2739-6

Madrid is an amazing city.  We had beautiful weather - sunshine and blue skies for the whole week in November!  The art galleries are first class.  

Susan J Foulkes December 2015