Day 23 - Learning the Craft

​Today we went to a little lecture on Estonian Fashion and how folk costumes have influenced current Estonian designers. It was incredible the small bits of a range of folk costumes and turned them into current modern day fashion. There were pieces influenced from Muhu, which stood out the most but that designer also created items from that side of the country. They were beautiful and really brought so much joy to the room. It was incredible what talented designers do with the patterns of traditional clothing. Estonians wore their folk costumes as their every day until their first independence in 1918. They would have a range of different things that, to us, looked like folk clothes, but the pretty ones we dance in these days were what they would consider their Sunday best or ones they would wear to parties and formal occasions, much like we would wear formal clothes. Often during occupation it was the only colourful item of clothing people had so it was a great source of joy for them.

​After this mum and I headed to the “Three Seto Belt” workshop. Here we had a wonderful teacher, Sigre. She lives in Setomaa in a traditional “talu” or farmstead. Her and her family live the old ways traditional life there. I have, a few times, thought about what it would be like to do that and if it was even possible. I shared this idea with Sigre and she welcomed it with open arms!! I had to be realistic though, I think it will just be a dream. She does work as a teacher so that would help. She showed us some examples of Leilo singing too and talked a bit about Seto life. It is different to the rest of Estonia with its own customs, traditions and beliefs. It is a religious area and has had influence from the Russian Orthodox Church.

​So when we finally got to making things, we started off with this belt that you use a bottle and a needle. You have to take the lengths of yarn you want and colours, about 10 of them, with one linen thread. Then you double it over and create a knot, placing the needle through. You then place it in the bottle and start to do particular knots on it to create a long belt. She helped us all with this until we got it right and then showed how to reverse the pattern. She did this one day and didn’t know how she did it but she had to remember because some of the people wanted to do that and it did look pretty cool. We then learned some croche belt but I was sticking to my one. I wanted to make a thicker one out of pink, white and yellow, just to see what it would look like. So I started a new one to see, while I still had her guidance there. It looked pretty good and once I had the right bits of yarn together, I was good to go. I then asked her if I could learn how to make sock ties because we need them for the boys in my dancing group. She was so obliging and found a pattern and helped me understand how to read it and start creating it. At first I was grabbing any bit of yarn so it looked like a mess and then I came to a point where I had made that many mistakes that I put that aside and going to start again. It was good I made mistakes because I learned so much from that process. At one point I think I spent about 15 minutes working out where I had done the wrong braid which affected where I was at and had to undo a lot of what I did. Two times Sigre had to come over and help set myself back up and keep my yarn in the right order. I also learned how to read the yarn and work out where I had to put the next bit. Without making those mistakes I never would have known.

​It was a really big day of learning and developing new skills. I really enjoyed it and was so grateful with Sigre at how patient she was with us. I also liked how excited and how much she wanted to share about the Seto culture, obviously it is something I am really interested in knowing. I can’t wait for the Seto craft camp and Kingdom day!
Until tomorrow
Marissa xx