The Work Continues

The steady thrum of treadle sewing machines along with chatter in Runyankole and laughter and singing has continued all week. Much work has been completed, and the sewing of new fashions has been mastered. So today was an opportunity to take some photos of finished products.

Here are some of the Bitengye Designers, modelling the latest fashion of shoulder bags, made from a combination of wax and Ghanaian fabrics. That's Alice in the middle, their extremely patient and capable teacher.

And the new iPad covers, in response to the request from many of you that we make these. Some of these will be available at the VIDEA sale being held in Victoria, at the end of the month. We won't be home yet, but Trudy will be trekking down island with a great assortment of the Bitengye products.

And just in case you're imagining us here in brilliant sunshine, here's a shot of one of the four thundershowers we had yesterday. The rain buckets down, but the sewing continues. Nothing will stop these women!

A Glimpse Inside the Classroom

 

So here's a glimpse at our "classroom". It is an inside-outside affair, with the treadle sewing machines sheldered under the round roof, but with only half a wall. When it begins to rain, as it's doing these days (we neglected to check what season we were arriving in, and it is indeed rainy season), we all rush under the cover of the roof, or onto the porch of the big house. But as soon as it stops, which it does as suddenly as it starts, cutting tables and chairs are moved back onto the grass. Except you have to be careful about that too, as rainy season brings out the red ants, and if they start marching in your direction, look out!

Did you notice the iron Sheilah was using? It works beautifully, but requires hot coals to keep it hot. By the way, she's making a quilt from embroidered birds made by Alice's mother and a couple of her friends. Look for the finished article in a few days. And lastly there's our lovely Annah, who is too ill to sew, but has joined us all the same. She has been to the doctor and received treatment, but is still very weak. We make up a bed for her in Canada House so she can lie down whenever she needs to. All the other women are in good health, although Lydia's daughter died this year, and she is now looking after her three children, and Sheilla too has been ill during the year, although she's better now. I brought greetings to all the women from all of you today, and they clapped and clapped in response. They are so happy to be here, every one.

The First "New Fashions"

Alice has been working hard all weekend, and has made up samples of several of the "new fashions" the Bitengye women will be working on this coming week. Here are the first two iPad covers, something that has been requested by several people over recent months.

And here's a child's travelling crayon case, perfect for a long car ride or a visit to grandparents.

And a pair of Christmas stockings. Add to this a small shoulder bag, a journal cover, a new larger bag and other still-to-be-made crafts, and it will be a busy week. This morning everyone else arrives, and the workshop begins in earnest. In fact I opened the door first thing and found Justina already here. She's going up the hill to the community centre for some chai and Ugandan breakfast. We will be facing some particular challenges this week - more to come on that later - but the biggest one is finding an alternate activity for three of the Bitengye Designers whose work is still not up to standard (Alice's evaluation). Please be thinking of us as we attempt to solve this problem. And thanks to all of you following along with us here in Uganda.

So Alice has arrived at Canada House and planning for the workshop is well underway. The first and most important thing, of course, was to go fabric shopping. Alice took us to a new shop we'd never been to before, and the selection there was great. As well as the "wax fabric" we've been using up until now, there were fabrics from Ghana - the very fabrics we'd hope to introduce to the ladies - hand-dyes cottons and damasks. (That's what Alice is holding up in the photo.) We also shopped for thread and beads, and then headed back "home" to talk over possible projects. Alice would like to teach the best seamstresses how to make garments, so that they can sew for other people besides Kitambaa Designs, and have a more steady income from doing so. But that might be for a later workshop to be held at her school. She thinks smaller items might be best for the next week. So we have tomorrow to work on more samples. Athens and her baby Ryan (last photo) live on the same grounds, and are keeping an eye on what we're up to. Ditto a small skinny white cat, who visits us regularly for a saucer of milk. We're all feeling pretty well, and eating well too. Curried beans on rice were a great hit last night, and avocados and tomatoes drizzled with balsamic aren't too shabby either. We wake to the morning doves, and settle into good books when the sun goes down in the evening, and the power is either off or a little sketchy. Not hard to adjust to at all. I feel very blessed indeed to be here.

A Ugandan Homecoming

There is a sense of coming home, arriving back in Uganda. Village life continues much as it has for many, many years. The women are still harvesting corn, coffee, sorgum and ground nuts, while the men haul huge bunches of green bananas up onto their bicycles and transport them to market. The smells are so familiar - dust coupled with exhaust fumes; while the songbirds fill the air with sound. We are back in Mbarara, after a week in Kampala, and the same "firm" mattresses await us, and we stock up on bottled water to combat the mid-day heat.

It's good to be here, and we look forward to the coming week, when Alice will arrive so we can plan the workshop together (and assemble the new sewing machines). Then on Sunday, all the Bitengye Designers come to Mbarara, and the workshop proper starts on Monday morning. We are feeling a little older than we were at the beginning of this project, but the women (who thought we might never come back), are just as determined as ever to get to work and get sewing. Truly amazing!

How I Spent My Summer Holidays - Pacific Rim, Vancouver Island

What a summer we've had on the west coast this year! Day after day of sunshine, breaking all previously-set records. I've spent huge chunks of it outside in one place or another, enjoying the beauty of it all, and filling up my "creative well" with all sorts of images and ideas to feed me during the winter to come. It's not that I haven't stitched and quilted, but these have been things to do in the cool of the morning, or when travelling, rather than central to my everyday studio practice.
These first few images are from Pacific Rim National Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island. I went

camping there for a week in July, with my husband David. We re-acquainted ourselves with the joys of tenting, and making a campfire, and took walks on the beach and through the rain forest, often accompanied by our daughter Jessie, who makes her home in Tofino (it's Jessie who's perched up in the cedar in one of these photos). I spent some time with my sketch book, trying to capture the lines of the waves, as surfers rode them in to shore; and the lines of ferns growing under the canopy of coniferous trees, and the lines of long-dead cedars arising from the bog. (Did you know that cedars can remain standing 100 years after they die? Something to do

with the oil in the wood.) And I took lots and lots of photos - moss hanging from trees, boardwalk pathways through the forest, asparagus ferns, the curve of bare branches - its all fodder for future work.
But I think the biggest value of spending lots of time walking and observing and just be-ing in places like this, is that is slows one down enough to pay attention, to actually see. We miss so much when we travel too fast. And this ability to pay attention serves us well in the creative life. In fact it's essential to it. Being in the forest allows me to connect with it in a visceral way, and that connection will show in my work. Nothing tangible, exactly, but I know it matters somehow, even if I can't quite put words to the "why" of it. I hope your summer has been rich in experience and in filling your own creative wells. It's good to re-connect with you after this hiatus, and I'll be sharing more of my summer with you in future blog posts, as the days begin to shorten and the 
temperature begins to cool.

Adventures with Indigo

Like many others, I have always been drawn to the colour indigo. It reminds me of my favourite pair of bell-bottomed blue jeans from back in the sixties and the overalls I dressed my children in when they were little. Then there are the Japanese and African fabrics I've found and admired in more recent years. Who knows, but there's undeniably something quite magic about this blue. The urge to work with indigo fabric I've made myself has become quite strong of late, so for the last two days, under the able instruction of Margaret (who has had a little more experience than Joan or Pamala or I), my backyared has become an indigo dye studio. Margaret began 

by showing us how the fabric can be folded or tied or pleated to create different patterns. We admired some of her own work, then prepared our own "indigo vat" using a starter kit I'd purchased from Maiwa. I think the first time I saw an indigo vat was in Morocco in 1974, having no notion at that time that this was something I might like to do one day. Amazing! While the vat fermented, gradually turning from a dark blue to a clear greeny-yellow colour, we prepared our fabrics. And then the dyeing and dipping began. When pieces emerged from the vat, they were a yucky green colour, but as they reacted with oxygen in the air, they deepened to a glorious dark blue. In no time at all, the grass was covered with our first pieces. Some proved too light, and needed a second dipping. Some didn't turn out quite as we'd imagined, in fact every piece was a surprise when we opened it up, but we were thrilled with it
all. And there was enough left in the vat at the end to try over-dyeing some black and white fabric, and to include an old flannel sheet that has been in my husband's family for eons, and a white cotton coverlet that I'd recently found at the Free Store on Hornby. The whole experience was very earthy, satisfying some deep longing in me to work directly with this amazing colour. I'm already looking forward to trying out new ways of manipulating the fabric to produce new textures on the fabric, and wondering if it's possible to thicken indigo and print with it. Time to do a little more research. Until next time, may you enjoy this summer however you choose to spend your creative energy.