Skirt material is usually hand-woven on a foot
loom by men. A woman then takes rectangular panel(s) of cloth and sews the
ends of the cloth together to form a "tube-shaped" wrap-around skirt.
Sometimes a "randa" or embroidered seam is used to decorate the
seam, other times it is a simple machine or hand-sewn seam. If the woman
wants a longer skirt, she may attach two panels of foot-loomed cloth
together. In some pueblos, two paneled skirts with colorful "randa"
seams connecting the panels is traditional and preferred. A woman then
steps into the tube skirt, pulls it around her with appropriate pleats and tucks
and then attaches it firmly with a sash or belt. In a few areas such as
Coban the skirts have a distinctively different form.
Traditionally most pueblos had a distinct skirt that that was worn
with its huipil. The skirt was called a "morga" and
usually made of un-mercerized cotton that was dyed various shades of indigo blue
and looked like quality "denim". Variations in white or lighter blue
stripes and the type of embroidered seam or "randa" that was
used to attach fabric together made each pueblo's morga distinctive. A
few pueblos had black and white morgas. Today commercial dyes have replaced the natural indigo dye and in many
pueblos the morgas have been replaced with "jaspe" or ikat "corte".
The "jaspe" (also called
has tie-died threads that make various patterns in the stripes of the skirt. The threads are generally
cotton. Some skirts also have threads made of acrylic, metalic and other synthetic materials. Patterns are complex
and some have named designs such as "munacas" (dolls).
Textile centers such as Salcaja, San Cristobal Totonicapan and Totonicapan make
the rainbow of jaspe corte cloth that are worn by Mayan women from many
pueblos. Some pueblos have jaspe corte designs and colors that are distinct to
the pueblo (for example, Amolonga, Santiago Atitlan, Santa Caterina Palopo and
Chichicastenango) and probably have local foot-loom weavers as well as buy from
the textile centers.