From the Collection: Trendsetters 'R' Us!

Kuba cloth: woven, dyed raffia,
appliqued onto more woven, dyed raffia
purchased on Ouagadougou

The Roommate & I don't really consider ourselves trendsetters, but I have to share with you some of the items from the latest West Elm catalog, which is about South Africa.  However, much of what they're showing is from Central Africa (specifically the Congo, Zaire region), and some of it's Masai, which is Kenya (or East Africa).  


These places are thousands of miles apart, and the tribes are even further apart in terms of language!  But I guess expecting corporate America to know about geography is expecting too much?

From the catalog:
Batiked kuba!  v. cool

In the West Elm catalog, they've used kuba cloth extensively and a little bit of raffia velvet (as decoration).  But that's not fair! We knew about it first...when we went to West Africa in 2006, it was on our list of textiles to bring back.  


One thing I will give them, though, is they found batik kuba...which we looked for, but never found on our trip. 


So here are a few things from our collection & some West Elm items.  


This first is using some skirts of raffia velvet on a bookcase--sort of like doilies!? I see these in shops pretty regularly (mostly in the $75-150 range), so we don't keep ours out where Kitty Cat can get to them, nor do we set anything on them; instead they are displayed as if in a museum...

From the catalog:
Bad photo--apologies; raffia velvet used as giant coasters?

If you'd like to know more about the highly graphic artwork the Kuba & Shoowa peoples create with raffia (not exactly a supple, easy material to work with!), check out the (previously mentioned) Weaving Abstraction exhibit which was at the Textile Museum in DC in 2011.  

A skirt of raffia velvet;
purchased in Ouagadougou

From the catalog

McCall's free pattern from Post Cereal; in W. African fabric

Here's the McCall's pounds-thinner pattern that my mom sent a while back.  I mentioned it in my last post, about vintage sewing patterns.  And I've made it up in some of the fabric I got in West Africa, probably Ghana or Burkina Faso.  It's supposed to look like strip-woven Kente (typical of Ghana); go to that page to see the real thing (strips woven on a narrow loom, then sewn together to form a delightful pattern).

The underside of the collar.

This is fairly cheap cotton, very thin & not at all drapy, and I was worrying about wearing it without a slip.  Then I remembered I had a pretty burgundy silk slip from Wintersilks, which almost matched the terracotta red in the cotton.  When I tried on the dress, almost done, yesterday, I had to take off 2.5" from the slip.  So I did that, and re-hemmed the slip.

Almost nothing left over!

I ended up using all that extra silk, though, because I barely had enough fabric to make the dress and there is nothing left over. I had to cut the length of the dress from selvage to selvage; there wasn't enough to cut it the normal way!  (Which meant I couldn't play with the length & proportions much--I just had the fabric width.)

I used the silk I cut off to hem the bottom & the sleeves.  There was so little fabric, I couldn't get the underside of the collar out of the kente print and had to use other West African wax print fabric.

Take it to the selvage!

I really made an effort to show the selvage of the fabric because we noticed that a lot in West Africa.  Rather than hemming, clothes are cut so the selvage is the hem.  However, this dress has quite a curved hem, so I ended up losing more than I wanted.

I will make this one again.  I love its cool look and big collar.  I will definitely add a bit in the middle so that the french darts are lower, and I'd probably make the overall length a bit longer, too.  Also, it needs a sway back adjustment (not much)...

BTW, it's got to be the best looking zipper I've ever installed!  I'll give a shout-out to Allison @ Bits of Thread in DC for her expert tutelage. 

From the Collection: Weaving Accoutrement, Part I

In addition to collecting textiles, we collect items used to make textiles (especially if they're wooden!).  I'll start off with items needed for weaving...drop spindles, shuttles & today, a back-strap loom and some loom pieces from Asia & Africa.

One reason we are drawn to such items is that besides being utilitarian, they are often beautifully decorated, too. They don't need to be carved in different shapes or have any decoration, but they do.  A great example is this loom (left) from Bobo Dioulasso, which has the hanging portion carved in the shape of a bird; I suspect this is from the Senoufo/Senufo people.  As a birder, I found a hornbill loom impossible to resist.

Bondouko

We're always amazed at how just a few bits of wood and string, if properly constructed can become a complicated loom.  We've seen them all over being used to make beautiful and intricate fabric.

In Africa the looms we saw weren't portable.  However, in Laos and Latin America you often see weavers using backstrap looms--all you need is a tree or fencepost and your loom is ready.

Here's a video of a man weaving in Cote d'Ivoire, on a loom much like this one. These looms are quite narrow (the resulting fabric is often about 6-7" wide, but some are even narrower).

Woven strip - Ghana

So what do you do with a very long piece of fabric that's only 6" wide? In West Africa, after strip-weaving, they sew all the narrow strips together, to great effect.  I believe this first example, blue & green (above), is some Bondouko cloth.  We bought this and another piece in Abidjan.  It has an interesting strip woven effect, but is also embroidered--unusual on a strip woven piece.  Embroidery is common, but on another type of fabric:  that made with Adinkra, or stamps carved from gourds. In the video, the man is making plain white fabric--this is useful, too, especially for printing on with mud to make Bogolon or mudcloth (you'll have to wait to see our examples of that).  

Left, above:  A strip we bought, basically just to show where Kente comes from.  These strips, however, are sold all over Ghana as souvenirs.  I can't imagine buying a strip, but not an actual piece of Kente; but that's just me.

Below are some examples of Kente & Ewe, from Ghana, where geometric design & strip weaving come together to create true masterpieces. This first one is cotton & rayon (I think).  Nowadays these items are worn for special occasions (we saw a few men in the villages wearing them, not often; perhaps they were officials, or on their way to a ceremony).  To give you an idea of how this cloth is worn, here is an amazing photo of three Fante women, two wearing Kente, the standing woman wearing an Adinkra print, taken in the late 1890s.   Strip weaving is a long process and requires a good eye and lots of work--these women were wearing their finest clothing, I suspect.

This blue & white fabric (left) is Ewe, also from Ghana.  The Ashante, who make Kente tend to use a wide variety of bright colors, while the Ewe tend to stick to indigo & white, with a healthy dose of primary colors to keep things interesting!  I am pretty sure we only saw Ewe made of cotton.


Finally, to the right is a silk Kente, which we bought in Tamale, in the north of Ghana.  Tamale is where you have to go if you want to get to Mole National Park; highly recommended.  It's also where I broke down in tears when I found a market selling used English-language paperbacks!  A story for another time--which would have been averted if Kindles or iPads were available then...

Remember I was talking about a simple-looking bit of wood & string put together to make a loom?  What comes off these looms is amazing.  Here's a piece we bought in northern Laos, at a "weaving village" mentioned in Lonely Planet.  We walked a few miles from where we were staying and found about 10-12 women using a variety of looms to create many different items.  We went for the largest piece they had, which you can see to the left.   (I have photos of that village, somewhere, but they'll have to be scanned in after I find them; this trip was in 2000.)

Back to the looms themselves:  reeds look much like a comb and are used to pack the weaving tightly.  (In the hornbill loom, above, the reed is the brown wooden part.)  Here are two combs from Laos.  The top is just the comb, while the bottom is the backstrap loom, complete with a bit of fabric and 4 heddles.  (Heddles are what makes the pattern.)  You'll probably notice the pleasing shape of these; all of these have been used as decoration in our various abodes because they are so lovely.

Here's a blog about backstrap weaving (an extremely portable loom).

If you're wondering, the carpet under these reeds is from Aswan in southern Egypt.  It's wool and another example of strip weaving, but with strips about 12" wide.  It's yet another masterpiece we've been lucky enough to come across (and afford).  More on carpets some other time.

I'd love your comments; are you bored stiff?  Should I go back to sewing?

From the Collection: For use with camels

Take a look at these items.  Any guesses as to what they are?  Here's a hint: if you had a camel, rather than a subway, train or car, you might need these.  First of all, the round baskets are camel milk baskets!

These baskets, with a leather covering, are useful for milking your camel; before plastic became ubiquitous, leather was great for transporting milk.  We got these when we lived in Oman & they are made by the Bedu, some of whom are still nomadic. (Really the term is transhumance:  they move from the desert in the winter to the seashore in the summer.  When we were living there from 1998 - 2002, we had students, at the university, who had been raised that way until they went away to boarding school; their families back "home" still moved around every 6 months or so.)

And the Tuareg camel bags are for transporting goods--much prettier than our suitcases.  They are also leather & are decorated lavishly. Fringe, colored embroidery, paint & detailed leather work.  We bought these in northern Burkina Faso at a market in Goram Goram.

Check out Tribal Music for more Tuareg items.  I especially like the rings!  Wow.  We didn't see much jewelry for sale in Goram Goram...it's really a market for the locals, not the tourists, so it was mostly farming goods, food, a bit of clothing and camels, of course!

The Roommate & I love markets; we like to see what it's like to go shopping elsewhere.  We are just as amused in a grocery store in the UK or Japan as we are in a market in Bahar Dar, Ethiopia, or northern Burkina Faso.  What are the people buying and selling, what do they wear to the market? (In Oman, certainly, the women really dress up.)  If you only see your friends 3-4 times each month, you'd dress up, too!

We have been trying to get the new house decorated.  Part of that involves treating it like a museum--we have boxes, most labeled in the basement, and we try to switch out our stuff so we can enjoy it all...hope you enjoy seeing all this, too!

Other stuff I've made: Quilts

West African Fabric Shop

I'm always raving about West African textiles & the roommate's & my 5-week shopping trip there...here are some quilts to show you what I made.  I bought a lot of fabric, and haven't made much of a dent in it, so plan to use more for dresses, shirts for the roommate, etc...

The first quilt (they are smallish 6' x 4' or so each) is called West African Fabric shop and shows nice orderly rows of fabric, one each of every kind I bought!  A friend in Dubai machine-quilted them for me.

The Anarchy of the African Market

The second quilt is titled The Anarchy of the African Market.  We like markets and find that they are a good place to observe the local people just being people, not selling things to tourists, or performing in any way.  We like to walk around a good market for a long time.  But the markets in Africa are pretty chaotic, to say the least, and really, downright scary.  (This doesn't include the much smaller, much harder-to-get-to markets of Goram Goram, Burkina Faso, or in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, which were fun, friendly, not crowded and very interesting--though not if you were looking for tourist treasure.)  So this 2nd quilt tries to reflect that anarchy and explains why I ended up not buying much fabric at the markets!  And mostly why we skedaddled after 20-30 minutes...we did try to go a few times, in Ouagadougou, in Accra, in Lame, and in Tamale, in northern Ghana, but never lasted a half hour--scary!  Jammed so tight you knew you were a target for robbery (I get nervous about this anywhere in the world), and also, it was pretty easy to lose each other!  Yikes.

This last one is a table cloth, and it sort of quilted itself, because as I sewed each strip on, I sewed it to the backing, then I just put the binding on.  Hope you like seeing these.  Comments? Questions?

Here's a mix of classic highlife music to get you in the mood.  I'd recommend looking for a classic highlife (50s-60s) CD online, or at the library, to get a better taste of this amazing music.