She Wears Shwe shwe

Happy house warming present

Got a lovely pre-emptive house warming present from B today.

Madiba shwe shwe dresses

These lovely dresses are made by a sewing project in Rosebank that supports homeless people in the area.

shwe shwe corset

Thank to Hilary  who has a very exciting exhibition involving shwe shwe and  is history coming up next year for alerting me to this beautiful shwe shwe corset made by Minki Pool - a graphic designer from Cape Town.  Follow this link to read all about the process she used to make it and links to other astounding things she has made. 

The detail in this is incredible. Really beautiful 

Jo and Marlise and Jeanette

 

My sweet friend Marlise heard that  I was on a bit of a mission to get some new and interesting shwe shwe outfits and hear the story behind them, and so in one wek she has found three more for me and sent them through.

Jo, works with Marlise at the Univeristy and made the lovely shwe shwe dress in this picture herself.

I think its a really super dress, with the bright bold colour bands at the  bottom that match the finishing touches of the little buttons on the sleeve.  I especially love the small details like the fact that the buttons match the order of the  colours of the bands.  Marlise is fond of clothes with lovely button detail - especially the clothes of local designer Poplap and  I am sure that it was the buttons that caught her eye. 

I love the use of the reverse blue too, where she has used the colour accents. 

Marlise also sent through a picture of herself and  Jeanette - who has featured on this blog quite a few times before in some of her amazing homemade outfits.   

In this picture Marlise is wearing a new red stripe shwe shwe skirt that Josephina sewed together for her quickly one afternoon.  Since Josephina first learnt to sew the shwe shwe patch bags almost two years ago her skill and sewing creativity have really blossomed.  Jeanette is wearing on of her everyday shwe shwe dresses. Its not one of her 'special occassion' dresses, but still lovely. And this speaks directly to what I love about shwe shwe - it can be your everyday comfortable dress, or it can be a very special event dress. 

Knibbel the friendly dog in the picture is not wearing any shwe shwe, but he is sporting a great new blue collar. 

 

 

Soweto Expo

I took a few awesome pictures at the Soweto Expo.    There were quite a few womens sewing cooperativves that did small things with shwe shwe and a variety of home sewn products. Also a few bigger dressmaking stores and wedding stores that ran more formal business operations. 

Here are a few pictures