Although Rolando & Naty’s family are 15 hours away in Teotitlan-del-Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico, you can witness at their local location (home) the laborious actions of brushing the wool straight, spinning the wool, dying and drying the wool, and finally weaving the wool together into a design.

• Sign up for this informative tour, the opportunity to learn about the culture and craft behind carpet weaving in Oaxaca, and even take home a beautiful rug!

BOOK A TOUR!

Custom Designed and hand woven 100% wool products.  They use an age-old process to create handmade flat weave rugs. Each of these products takes more than a week to finish. These Oaxaca rug weavers, together with their families, begin by spinning the wool and collecting dye plants in the mountain.

• The coloring begins once the children have collected enough wood to make a fire and boil the water that contains the plants used in dyeing. These plants then sit overnight and will be reboiled the next day until they are ready to put in the natural colored wool.
• The wool is soaked in different colors for varying periods of time depending on the desired hue. Finally, the now colored wool will be hung out to dry in the sun, ready for weaving.

The colors of a traditional rug will be dyed using ONLY natural ingredients. No chemicals or artificial dyes are used.

Below are some of the few ingredients that are used to create the natural colors needed to dye the wool yarn.

• Red – Dried cochineal – an insect parasite that lives and feeds on cacti. The cochineal produces carminic acid in their digestive system which is a thick, deep red liquid and a perfect colorant. The bugs are then harvested, dried, and sold as dyes to carpet weavers. And when these dried cochineal are ground up, the deep red colorant is exposed.
• Blue – Indigo
• Yellow – Local yellow flowers & Dried pomegranate shells
• Brown – Nut tree bark
• Tan – Pecan hulls & other nuts
• Pink – Alderwood tree bark
• Green – Alfalfa Leaves