Women get crafty at fabric fair in picturesque setting
Torn and tattered, SA’s fabric has to be stitched back together. But not merely with needle and thread for retired Rhodes Village publisher Fiona Adams, who wove a unique Fibre & Fabric Fair for the mountain lifestyle village tucked into a valley high on the flanks of the Maluti mountains this month.
The village was known as a hunting, fishing, adventure biking treasure — mostly for men — and this moved her to toil away for a year at creating a programme that was multilayered, but would mostly attract women.
In an environment ravaged by fast fashion created in sweat shops on the other side of the world, what better way to start the repair work than making your own clothing at home?
It was a gamble, but the media designer and activist in her youth pulled together an event which would ping a number of goals; bring in people around a common love of crafts and skills, ignite new money-earning ideas, but fundamentally bring the women of town, from the typical Eastern Cape village and Zakhele township together around shared interests.
Adams worked to bring organisers, experts and craft lovers together in a five-day programme which offered 18 different creative skills available to ordinary folk who needed merely to have curiosity and a desire to learn.
If women from Zakhele were unable to afford the fees for 47 classes, demonstrations and talks, sponsors were found.
Adams was delighted at how people came, probably 130 including day visitors.
Seventy-four overnight attendees made their way from as far as the UK and US, but most trekked across the vlakte to take the final scenic but rough 60km dirt road with its ups, downs and sharp cuttings, to descend finally into the beautiful, tree-lined, spotless, safe and tranquil village.
The village, serving a surrounding agricultural community some of whom are sixthgeneration farming families, was spruced and mown, its public rose garden clipped and clean, its tourism office well stocked, its restaurants and two hotels open and the fair’s venues filled with laughter and a buzz of joyous discovery.
Many knew each other, or knew of their work, and it was evident that new and old relationships were fostered.
They came from Chintsa and the East Coast, East London, Klerksdorp, Knysna, Tarkastad and SA’s metros, among them sewing groups from neighbouring towns of Barkly East and Burgersdorp.
The list of events from the programme included: boro styled patch-patch, scrap busting bowls, embroidery (hand and Sri Lankan), crazy patchwork, spinning with merino wool, creative knitting, the cross-cultural history of isiShweshwe which it turns out is a global phenomenon, sewing machine maintenance and needles, crotchet, block printing, fabric painting, nuno felting, kawandi-style quilting and freeform machine embroidery.
The Siyazingisa Women’s Sewing Co-op, represented by Bongiwe Somadani, Ntombekhaya Ponoshe and Nondala Boyce, said they were there for basic machine embroidery lessons.
They were pleased to be able to extend their styles.
“We are getting lots of ideas,” they said.
Their journey as seamstresses started in 1993 working under seamstresses in town, but by 2020 they had picked up enough muscle and steam, and support from the government, to launch their own operations.
They launched in 2021 with eight machines and were selling materials and making the garments. They also formed a youth co-op, Kamvalethu, and worked with the disabled, teaching beading and sewing.
Adams said after the dust had settled: “The fair went extremely well.
“It met all my objectives: bringing women in a historically divided community together over shared interests; involving all sectors of the local community; spreading the fair’s financial benefits across the wider community; sharing skills; sharing resources such as equipment, magazines, materials, introducing Rhodes to a new tourism market; inspiring women through exposure to new forms of creativity and giving local crafters access to new buyers.
“It’s given Rhodes as a whole a much-needed boost.”