She Wears Shwe shwe

Naledi Police Station

While I was at the police station in Soweto at the end of last year to meet their great team of volunteers. One of the women waiting for the mediation team was wearing the lovliest shwe shwe dress with two different blue shwe shwe fabrics and loads of embroidery.

Marisa

Marissa works with my husband and he  very kindly asked if he could take pictures of her skirt and explained what he wanted them for.  (  I had mentioned the blog to Marissa before and she had told me about this skirt, so it was not a completely weird request for him to make)

This skirt is one of the reasons why I love shwe shwe so much  the fact that it lends itself to so much individual interpretation, from simple uses of the fabric, to create and embellished creations.

Marissa's skirt has the most beautiful embroidery and bead work on it to transform the simple panels into something spectacular. 

 I love the details in the  embroidery and have been inspired to take out the peacock panels I bought a while ago that I wanted to transform into more intricate pieces.   Have bought some sequins and beads and will test one panel this week in the evenings to see what more it might become.   

Kuna Childrens Clothing

from www.kuna.co.za posted in the comments about her lovely range of childrens clothing. My favourites are the overdyed shwe shwe jacket and the pink tired skirts - so lovely.

 

After seeing these I went out to buy some more orange shwe shwe and will try make a skirt and shorts for my twin nephew and niece.

JoJo's bags

Since Josephina sewed her first shwe shwe patchwork bag earlier this year she has become a sewing addict.  She now has a machine  and churns out the most amazing stuff. 

I bought her some of the pink and orange shwe shwe when I went to buy some to post to Abigail and in return she made me bags for my colleagues with half of it.

It was great to give them all a unique pink and orange bag on the last day of the year before we all headed off for the holidays. I do think I will need to buy a whole roll of the soccer shwe shwe that is on the shelves and think about how we can feather JoJo's nest egg during the world cup.

Any ideas of what she could sew and sell  ?

Shwe shwe Blue

Towards the end of last year I got to photograph some beautiful blue shwe shwe at some of the places where I normally just photograph a different kind of blue - the uniforms of the police and community policing forums that I work with.

My favourite event, and the most amazing place for capturing lovely proud ladies wearing shwe shwe, was the Domestic Watch award ceremony.  Domestic Watch is a local program that teaches domestic workers about safety and introduces them to their local police in a constructive way and at the end of each year they have a huge ceremony where chapters from all over Joburg get together to celebrate their work and  to thank everyone, including the Domestic workers and the police who have made a difference to their areas safety.

The attendees are encouraged to dress-up , which luckily for me means loads of the loveliest shwe shwe you could ever see in one room. 

 I have gone through the photos from the day with a big smile as I remember them all and just taken the  top ones. Some of the my favourite policemen  from various stations were there too so that made it even more special.

Many of the ladies had new dresses made for the event, and some added their own embellishments too. 

 There were also several traditional venda prints - such as the red stripes  in the lady in the right.  

My colleague Nonhlanla was having a good giggle at me running around taking photos of all the ladies and not knowing which way to turn. 

 One of the stations asked me to take photos of their prize winners which I gladly did, and all the three winners of the big lucky draw prizes were all wearing shwe shwe too. 

The winner of the generator - a really amazing prize was wearing a dress made completely in the  reverse shwe shwe with only a bit of the  front of the fabric popping out as a trim. 

The dress is very similar to one my Mother-in-law has and she was most surprised as hers had come from an exclusive boutique.  :-)

 The winner was in tears, as were the police who handed her the amazing prize.

My favourite was the  three ladies who spent the whole day together. I saw them arrive together and tried to catch them on camera during the hustle of the beginning of the ceremony, but caught up with them during the speeches.

They went to buy their dresses together  and wanted ones that looked the same.  I could have hugged them all to share with happiness in their dresses.

Loads of Love

I made this shwe shwe picnic blanket for a lovely couple as a wedding present. Len works in the office we sometimes frequent and is a lover of shwe shwe too. When I buy new pieces I bring them to the office and keep them on Len's desk for the day so that she can smell the unique shwe shwe smell until I take them home to rinse them and start sewing with them.

When she got married to the gorgeous Lerato, I wanted to make them something special as a present and thought up this.  Next time I might make smaller triangles again at the top and the bottom to get the heart lines even straighter.

One of the pinks is from the offcuts of the dresses I made the girls in the my street, and little Remo was at my house when I gave Len the present and she was thrilled to point out the material from her dress.