Guatemalan Huipil Backpack

Step 1: Travel to Guatemala. Step 2: Visit the market and purchase a well-worn, authentic Guatemalan huipil. Step 3: Create a backpack that incorporates the best parts of that huipil. Step 4: Wear this one-of-a-kind backpack with great joy!

Fold Top Backpack made with a Guatemalan huipil.

This is the first backpack I made with the huipil. It’s a beautiful reminder to Hayley of her time among the Guatemalan people.

In March 2019, Tom and I joined Hayley during her World Race Gap Year for 5 days in Antigua, Guatemala. In addition to seeing the sights around Antigua, we served alongside the students in the villages. We distributed water filters to the families and also built efficient and cleaner burning stoves for their homes. It was a brief, but wonderful opportunity!

When I visited the villages in Guatemala I was mesmerized by watching the women creating these woven works of art, many of which would become everyday work clothes. On a visit to the market I purchased a huipil that, as a garment, had definitely seen better days. But much of the weaving was still of great quality. My only regret is not coming home with more of these treasures! My first order of business was to make a backpack for Hayley using this huipil. Fast forward a few years and there were still pieces of that huipil that needed a new life. This backpack was created using the very last bits of that huipil.

You can find this backpack (and all the others that I have in stock) here on the website.

Noodlehead Patterns

The women in the villages were gracious to demonstrate their amazing backstop weaving skills!