World’s largest crochet covers a town in western Mexico

Etzatlán, Mexico, Mar 5 (EFE).- After years of strenuous effort, Lorena Ron proudly displays the record-breaking 8,000-square meter crochet that covers the western Mexican town of Etzatlán.

The crochet by the Cielo Tejido collective, made up of some 150 women and men, has earned them a Guinness World Record for the world’s largest fabric pavilion.

A similar 900-square-meter piece made by them represented Mexican art at Dubai’s Expo 2020.

Lorena Ron, leader of the collective, told Efe that the project began as a religious offering.

“We never thought that something so small that began by covering trees and then making this beautiful woven sky would reach these extremes,” she told Efe.

“We are present in Dubai and with a Guinness record, we did not imagine that these hands would turn wonderful things and empower women in our town”, she added in the middle of a weaving session.

She began the project in 2013 to cope with the loss of her father and husband. She sought out the local authorities’ help and gathered a team as the demand increased.

“The fabric heals your mind and your body because you forget your sorrows, your worries, your stress, you turn it into wonderful things and apart from that it is also a social fabric that unites all social classes for the same goal,” she pointed out.

Ronaldo Guzman is a young singer, painter and lawyer who joined the group in 2020 and was seduced by the art of transforming a thread into multiple forms, he explained to Efe.

“Something that caught my attention is seeing the work and love with which the weavers do this, this is their passion,” he said.

“It is something that identifies us as a municipality, working here led me to learn how to weave and be in a project that we did not imagine would be so big,” he added. EFE

mg/ta/mp