It was important for me to participate in the two workshops in the Mpumalanga province to meet the participants and to get a sense of the material conditions in which they produce the Amazwi Abesifazane cloths (conditions I referenced in my post yesterday), but also to understand the process of cloth production. Many of the participants have never embroidered or done hand-sewing before, so I wanted to see how skills were imparted to them (by Mrs. Gambushe, M, and myself) and the choices they made at each step of their cloth production. At the end of each workday, we collected the cloths from the women to distribute them the following morning. I am still thinking through this practice of collection - in some respects it made me uncomfortable because of my concern that it was sending a message that we didn't trust the participants as rhetorical composers to work on their cloths by themselves or even care for the cloths through the night until the workshop the next morning. Despite my concerns about this action, it is an established practice of the organization, and it made it relatively convenient for me, then, to take an image of each cloth at the end of each workday. I've included the four stages of Thandi Mokwena's cloth. She was a participant of the first week's workshop, sponsored by the Parliamentary Millennium Programme. After composing her narrative and drawing a rough sketch for the cloth's design, CAS facilitators told her to hem the border of her cloth quickly with a large, running-stitch, write her name on the cloth, and then choose a more decorative border to complete the hem (she picked a relatively simple, bi-colored running stitch). From there she transferred the sketch onto the cloth using a colored pencil and began embroidering. She approached me during the middle of the second day with her sketch and asked me to draw figures to represent people onto parts of the structure she had already added. During the last sewing day of the workshop she approached me again to draw figures in the small yellow house in the bottom left corner. Both times as I sketched the figures for her, I referred to her original sketch and asked her if my rendering was acceptable to her.
Hand embroidery is a time-intensive medium. It allows the producer time to make decisions and to add and subtract items relatively easily (provided the selection of fabric, needle, and thread are compatible and you're not using a large needle with a delicate fabric, for example, and rending holes in the fabric if you decide to remove any stitching). What has continued to interest me about the embroidery for these particular cloths, is that the images that are slowly and carefully embroidered are meant to represent past histories and living conditions of the producers sewing them. What thoughts does the producer consider, in this case Thandi, when she is embroidering a small, irregular rectangle that is meant to stand in and represent someone she has known that died? How does it feel to embroider personal and representative subject matter, especially if you know it is intended for a larger audience?
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