My Perfect Day
It is Sunday and everything is moist and soft in the drizzle and rain of the past few days. I wake early and sit in the stillness to stitch. Simple stitching is restful, contemplative. Later, I’m keen to walk in … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Embroidery/Stichery
Threads for Africa.
Yes, I did it! I packed all those threads into big zip-lock bags and squished them into that suitcase. They will be given to the 6 textile groups we’ll visit on my tour to South Africa in April. The threads … Continue reading →
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Stitching on Spirit Island
This past week I was on Manitoulin Island to visit Judy Martin’s home with Penny Berens and Margi Hennen. Manitoulin is known as Spirit Island due to deep spiritual significance to the Indigenous People. What joy to be in this … Continue reading →
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Off to South Africa again!
One grandmother who received a pair of reading glasses said it changed her life. She’d had to stop sewing because of poor eyesight, and that was the only income for her family of 10 she was supporting. Now, with those magnifier glasses, that cost under $10, she was able to start sewing again. This meant food on the table. The glasses were the thin divide between dire poverty and making ends meet.
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Slow Quilting
We gaze at the patchwork, the fine cotton, the tiny quilting stitches. Like sentences in a diary, each patch is a record of a childhood dress, a housecoat and scraps from dressmaking projects from an ear when women made all the families clothing.We sense the comforting continuum of the generations of women who stitch. And so it continues with Cooper’s quilt. We’re doing what women have always done…slow stitching.
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Judy’s Journal: I feel as if I know her
Judy Martin wrote a lovely piece about some embroideries I’d bought on my recent tour to South Africa. These highly expressive pieces were made by women in the Isipethu Sewing Collective in KwaZulu Natal. We visit this group each time we take our tour to South Africa.
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Gathering
To gather with friends is a simple, rich experience and, when women gather to stitch, it is particularly special. Last week began with two days with my dear friends, Judy and Margi at Penny’s house in Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia… always a treasured and affirming time.
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Embroidery Bearing Witness
On September 7th, a fascinating exhibition of South African embroideries will open at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles. It’s called, Bearing Witness: Embroidery as History in Post-Apartheid South Africa It will feature the work of two groups that I’ve been closely connected to over the past 10 years through my fair trade imports, African Threads and my cultural tours to South Africa.
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Mapula Cloth by Elizabeth Mogano
> Mapula Cloth by Elizabeth Mogan Originally uploaded by African Threads I’ve just returned from 6 weeks in South Africa. It was a truly rich and fascinating time. Veryan and I visited 9 women’s groups in various parts of S.Africa including … Continue reading →
