She Wears Shwe shwe

Tau in her dress

Tau's mom has very generously sent me this lovely picture of Tau in  the dress I made her for her 1st Birthday. 

 I can't wait to sew her another one for when she turns two

Dineo

When I started working with the Naledi Victim Support Centre I was drawn to Dineo, who with her white hair and similar shoes reminded me  so much of my  own gran. 

The next time I saw her I summoned up some courage to tell her and how much I had wanted to give her a hug as a result ( My gran was the most wondeful women, tall, kind, with a great sense of humour and full of love for all her misfit grand chidlren) 

When I told Dineo she said to  me " Stop standing on that side of the room girl,  get over here and give me a hug. I need a grand daughter anyway and so you can become my new grand daughter" 

Since then we great each other with much enthusiasm every time I see her and I have learnt quite a bit more about her life. Her own daughter was killed in the youth uprising in South Africa and she left behind a young son, and a big gap in Dineo's life. 

After I made a fuss of Violets dress a few weeks ago, Dineo came to our next meeting wearing her shwe shwe dress. 

 I was thrilled with it, because it is of brown 3 cats shwe shwe and so similar to the material of my Duro Dress. 

 So we agreed that on my next trip to Naledi, Dineo would wear her dress again and I would wear mine. 

Last week I  wore my Duro and Dineo wore her dress, and we loved the fact that someone asked us if we were family because we were dressed the same. 

 

Matric Dance Gran goes in Shwe shwe

There is a lovely story in the news today about a boy who took his grandmother to his matric farewall as a thank you for looking after him since his parents died. A lovely enough story on its own- made even more special by the dress he had made for her.    Wish we had a full length image of the dress, but from the picture I can see that its made of shwe shwe with  elaborate stitching on the bodice

Dress made for her in secret

Every time, he answered that he was taking "a very special person". He even had a dress made for her in secret.

Thulani said: "We took her measurements while she was sleeping. I gave her the dress two days before the matric farewell. Fortunately, she liked it."

Violet

My work in Naledi in Soweto is primarily with the CPF (Community Policing Forum), but I have found a happy home with the volunteers who run the Victim Empowerment Centre or Trauma centre and have been able to organise some much needed training for them. My favourite training sessions are the ones done with  the Deep Democracy team.

Most of the people who staff this unit and who fulfill this valuable role in society are pensioners. There are one or two young people who have joined the team and they amaze me with their insight and empathy at such a young age. 

Violet is one of the people who work as a volunteer for this centre, with no compensation, but driven by the knowledge of the need for their service.  She has been with the trauma centre since it opened late last year, and the more I interact with her, the more I realise what an absolute gem she is. 

At this weeks training session with the Youth Desk from Naledi and the team from the Trauma Centre Violet arrived wearing the most beautiful shwe shwe outfit.  Luckily I had my camera with me  because I needed to take pictures of another  training  session that I had organised in the hall next door on Conflict Resolution and Restorative Justice with the team from Khulisa - and so I could get some photos of her beautiful outfit. 

I have been waiting  a long time to get an outfit with this kind of detail - normally when I see them I don't have my camera near me. 

Violets dress is brown and yellow shwe shwe with extensive stitching detail around the neck, on the hem and even on the puff of the sleeves. 

There is additional detail of yellow patterns on the  sleeves and on the piece of material that Violet winds as a scarf on her head. 

 I am sad that the photos are a bit blurry, because there is absolutely nothing blurry about Violet. She is caring, compassionate, empathetic while at the same time being  entirely confident. She also has  great sense of humour. I could learn quite a bit from Violet just by being in her presence, 

Constance

On Thursday this week as I was walking through the dusty streets of Naledi in Soweto past chickens and children with Napoleon, Chairman of the Community Policing Forum, I thought about how interesting my new job is. 

On Thursday I helped the Youth Desk of the Naledi Community Policing Forum with an initiative of theirs - to paint house numbers for shacks that have no numbers so that the police and emergency services can find them when they need help.  

This was a project all of their own design and I just helped them approach sponsors and get the relevant players on board - and then came to help out with manpower on the actual day. 

The first house number was for Constance,  who also happened to be wearing a lovely shwe shwe dress. DOuble reason to haul out my camera.

Her dress had the same pattern as the  Duro Dress that I made for myself a while ago. 

Her dress is quite simple with white ribbon trim on the sleeves, pockets and hem.  Constance told me her dress was made by a Zimbabwean women in the community who is too old now to make dresses anymore. Most women like Constance have one or two shwe shwe dresses that they wear for years and years as their primary item of clothing. 

I will make sure that I get  the photo printed for Constance and take it to her when I go through to Soweto this week. 

Walking  through temporary housing made of tin is not always the most pleasant thing, but I was so impressed with the  Youth Desk and the CPF  members that joined us, in the way they interacted with the people. It was also interesting for me to see what personal touches had been added to these dwellings to make them a bit more of a home. 

Here, Just because it was such a positive day for me are two more photos. 

This is quite a typical picture of the houses that needed house numbers, but this one had the exceptional fruit tree full of blossoms and bees in front of it. 

The Police and the Youth Desk working together  on more than one thing at a time. Natasha helps the policeman take a phone call while he finishes painting a number on house number 44.

Quality - Made in South Africa.

Agnes and Angelina

For my Birthday this week I organised a dinner at one of my most favourite places in Joburg -  Zietsies.

Zietsies, the home of Elzabe Zietsman and the temporary home of many guests and people like me who pop in all the time, is situated on the Brixton ridge overlooking the whole of the northern suburbs. Elzabe has built a glass dining room onto the house and also cooks the most amazing food.   My house has no dining room, it was the coldest week of the year so I couldn't stash my guests in the garden, I don't cook really well, and my Brixton view is of the water tower so it was really a no-brainer for a choice. 

Zietsies is run by the comedy trio of Elzabe, Angelina and Agnes. Agnes and Angelina had gone out to buy some clothes that would serve as a 'uniform' for when they are on duty and they had settled on some brown shwe shwe outifts.  

Angelina is wearing the brown dress. I love the woven herringbone effect of the shwe shwe on the bodice and can only imagine how much work getting the yellow trimming took. It also has great pockets.  Like Erin from Dress a day,I am a really big believer in pockets.

Agnes has a panel skirt on with the great circle print that is out at the moment with a lovely front panel of  plain brown fabric with interesting white design.  

Sister Bucks

I was quietly munching on some healthy lunch at Kuai in Rosebank this week and watching the world go by when I saw what looked like an awesome shwe shwe creation in the window of a shop across the path.  I had to dig for my glasses in my bag so that I could see that far and saw that it was indeed a fabulous creation in the window of a shop called Sister Bucks. 

After my lunch I popped in to take a closer look. The outfit in the window was made of blue shwe shwe . The skirt of the outfit is what fascinated me most. Rather than a full piece of material, the skirt was a collection of shwe shwe pockets in various designs all sewn together. It was beautiful.  Inside the shop I was lucky to meet Sister Bucks herself , who happened to be in the store at that time.

You can see some of the other beautiful designs by Sister Bucks on her website  www.sisterbucks.co.za. This orange outfit is one of the images from her site, I love the use of the orange trim on the top and the skirt. 

Makotis

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.

Duro Dress

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

Martine's purple frock

I loved the way this dress that I made for the awesome Martine turned out. I had made myself a dress in teh same pattern using some mozanbique  fabric given to me a few years ago  by  the equallay awesome Marlise, (more about Mozambique fabrics in a future post to come, as I have just returned from a week of sea sand and sun in Moz)

Martine  liked the style of mine and requested one for her  end  of year office party.

Its made out of some of the purple shwe shwe that I bought, with a lilac satin bodice.

It looked just super on Martine ( if I may say so myself)