She Wears Shwe-Shwe

I read this morning on the Joburg website that the Fashion Kapitol is almost complete.

This has been a long term project as part of the rejuvenation of the inner city, and I am very excited that it is near completion. I think I was last there two or three years ago when then the project was still getting the momentum it needed.

I was happy to read that Bongiwe Walaza has taken space there, as she has done some wonderful things with Shwe shwe, and will soon be making a trip down town to visit this new fashion hub.

In South Africa at the moment there is quite a bit of doom and gloom, but projects like this , that are so clearly invested in the future really brighten my day.

You can read up more about this exciting precinct here - Fashion Kapitol Almost Complete

I have just come back from a wonderful weeks holiday in the little village of Rhodes in the Eastern Cape with some fabulous friends.

I saw quite a bit of shwe shwe wearing in the village, but only managed to get some photos of the ladies at a community enhancement felting and sewing project called 'The Red Barn'.

Two of the women sewing lovely woolen scarves outside the barn in the sun had red shwe shwe skirts on. The scarves were being constructed with such lovely local wool, I almost expected to see some of the sheep in in the fields in town at the end of their balls of wool.

Outside of Rhodes is another sewing project that several women within the area contribute to. They had several quilts (that would be better suited to outdoor picnic blankets I think), one of them had many red shwe shwe inserts.

The Wren - whose gorgeous shwe shwe bags I have mentioned before has made the lovliest little bird pouches made from remnant shwe shwe and other fabrics.

They are so lovely thought, that the moment she puts them up on her esty shop they fly away as fast as their wings can carry them to other peoples homes.

I have heard that there are more on the way, so I will keep my beady birds eye on The Wrens blog and the etsy page and see if I can make one of them mine.

(hopefully before then I can remember the number for my Internet Banking log in - a silly sequence of numbers I can type without thinking, but stopped to think while typeing it yesterday and now like the Wrens lovely birds, that number has flown away from my grasp. Even my sub conscious mind tried to capture it, as I dreamt about it several times last night. When I remember it I can transfer some funds to my credit card for happily well deserved shwe shwe bird purchases )

I have been chatting to Miss  P who wants to make a bubble dress out of shwe shwe, an exciting idea.

She was telling me about Makoti, a great store in downtown Johannesburg that makes great shwe shwe outfits, and I went to have a look at their site. There are some of the most beautiful creations and traditional outfits well worth perusing on makotis.co.za . They have many different styles and traditional dresses. I loved this one with its one sleeve wrap around top.

If you have made a bubble skirt ever, or have any advice for Miss P on making one please let me know and we can make her dream dress come true.

I bought some great new shwe shwe at my favourite store Arthur Bales in Linden last week.

I love the spirals because they remind me of the spirograph I used to love playing with as a child. My nephew and niece recently got one too, and I got to relive some of the fun while showing them how to use it.

The stripes are quite unusual for a shwe shwe pattern, so I had to get them too.

I think  I might cover the cushions of the morris chair on my front veranda with these two fabrics . I had originally thought I would use the fabric to make reusable gift bags, but when they started measuring it out I succumbed and asked for two more meters of each for possible cushion covers.

Two of my neighbours kids had their birthdays recently.  Birthdays for some of these kids are very different from the  birthdays of  my nephew and niece (In scenario one my niece  got to choose to a nother real live pony as a present  as well as a smothering of gifts and a very inappropriate amount of money in each card  at her birthday party that all the screaming girls counted up at the end.   In scenario two, Clinton who who is of the same age  got a school jersey for winter as his gift, which was a bit of a luxury as he goes to high school next year, and so needs whole new school uniform next year anyway)

When I asked one set of neighbours what I could contribute to a birthday they asked if it was possible to get a cake ( One, small cake - as his only treat)

I normally bake with these children  from time to time anyway so I invited both of them and their siblings to come and bake and decorate their own cakes on Saturday.

Here in this picture are Nandio, Fiona and Lebsie  wearing  some of my collection of Shwe shwe Madiba aprons. They were for sale at most Pick and Pay stores a while ago and I bought one in every colour and pattern. Even though you can only wear one apron at a time, I often have several bodies in my kitchen helping out, and they made lovely gifts, so I could justify buying one of each.

Take a look at these gorgeous Shwe shwe bags made by The Wren.  I love the use of fabrics, the size, the style AND the fact that something this great is locally made.

There is also a post on the Wren Blog about The shwe shwe story if you need a quick shwe shwe recap.

You can buy them on ETSY (one of my all time favourite concepts) here .  Each bag is unique and the colour combinations are lovely.

Ever since I started taking a deeper look at shwe shwe and the way the reverse of the material was used I was determined to use it in a dress with reverse bodice details. I had an idea in my mind of what type of dress I would like it to be, but not until reading on Erin's Blog Dress a day about her love of the Duro dress did I have a name and some history to put to the image of the dress I had in my head.

Last year when I went shopping for Vauneen for some shwe shwe to make into her lovely family made cot quilt for baby Tau, she also chose a pattern for a dress as I had offered to make her one, and while she paged through the pattern books I choose a pattern for a dress for myself.  It turns out we both chose almost identical patterns, just from different books. 

The red dress is one I made for the lovely Elke for her birthday. She is my gardening inspiration and so the flower pattern was quite applicable. Sometimes the reverse of the shwe shwe is quite dark and not much of the pattern shows through, but in this the faint white flowers shone through nicely.  I had bought some broad red floral ribbon for something else that seemed perfect for this dress so I added it as a trim instead of the traditional reverse.

The brown one is the dress I made for myself.  I could get it work the first few times I wore it, but I realise now that the cotton was still a bit stiff. After a few washes it no longer stands straight but flows comfortably and has become one of my favourite summer dresses. I think it will work well for me in Autumn , early winter too, as I am not fond of long sleeves, even in winter and think tights and boots with this dress will work well.

you can see some more gorgeous Duro Dresses here

Sarah from The Needle and Damage done

Modified Duro from  Stacy Sews

Princess of Bob made this gorgeous brown and turquoise one

Made this baby vest for a friend of ours that is expecting her first baby.

I thought the brown would be applicable for either a boy or a girl, and used an applique stitch on my sewing machine that is an elaborate zig zag to trim the edges. rather than a single zig zag stitch, this is a triple stitch and it gives it more of  an appliqued look.

I used brown shwe shwe from the three cats range with a small geometric pattern.

I miss Elizabeth who used to live in our garden cottage and was my shwe shwe sewing buddy.   Now that she has retired and gone home i no longer have someone I can run out and share some sewing with.

In her place , her daughter Josephina has come to live in our garden. ( we weren't asked as much as told that this would be the arrangement) , but we are very happy with the new status quo.

Last weekend Jospehine came out of her house wearing a lovely red shwe shwe skirt. Josephina has not inherited her mothers love of sewing, but is wearing one of her mom's early creations.

In the last few months that Elizabeth was here, we discussed many sewing techiniques and played around with braiding and finishes , and I sent elizabeth home with several packs of ric rac, and binding and shwe shwe to keep her busy at home.

As an early creation of Elizabeth's, Jospehine's skirt is a plain wrap around skirt with some red bias binding trim.