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Fatme Elkadry (she/her) is a first-generation settler on Amiskwaciwâskahikan from Safad, Palestine. She is a multi-disciplinary artist and has studied visual art, fine craft, graphic design, prose, and performance art through a variety of experiential opportunities, including formal education and personal mentorship. Fatme utilizes her art practice to explore and express her identities. She passionately advocates for barrier-free and equitable involvement of all folks in the arts. Fatme’s favourite things in life are her mom, magpies, and purple figs.

Jessica Fern Facette (Fern, she/her) is an Edmonton based fibre artist who has been weaving for nearly two decades. She is a passionately engaged artist who shares knowledge and encourages others to discover textiles. She founded Fern’s School of Textile Craft in 2017, a place where fibre artists from across Canada meet to carry on the long tradition of sharing skills and knowledge. Fern is a stalwart advocate for the accessibility of textile arts and has created many opportunities for folks to explore textiles through years of volunteering, mentoring and most recently an in-studio textile residency. Fern’s own weaving is an exploration of colour, pattern and texture.

Hannah Quimper-Swiderski (she/they) is a visual artist, curator, and Digital Program Manager at Latitude 53. They currently live and work in Edmonton-Amiswaciwâskahikan.

Transcript

Hannah:  Great. So hi, everybody. Welcome to Art From Here. My name is Hannah, I'm Digital Program Manager at Latitude 53. Latitude 53 is an artist-run center located on Treaty Six Territory. We acknowledge that so-called Edmonton is located on the ancestral and traditional territory of the Cree, Dene, Blackfoot, Salteaux, Nakota Sioux as well as the Metis. Our recognition of this land is an act of reconciliation and an expression of our gratitude to those whose territory we reside on or visiting, virtually or in person. So today's studio visit is a part of Art From Here which is a project that highlights an artists or artists monthly and gives them a platform to share with the community what they've been, what they're currently working on or thinking about. This is a project that we've been working on since spring of 2020 in partnership with the Mitchell Art Gallery, Ociciwan and the Society of Northern Alberta Print Artists. So this month, we're featuring a really special project called Weaving to Reclaim which is a collaboration between Fern Facette and Fatme Elkadry so I'll do a quick little introduction of both of the artists before passing it along to them to get tonight's conversation started. So Fatme is a first generation settler on Amiskwaciwâskahikan from Safad, Palestine. She's a multidisciplinary artist and has studied visual art, Fine Art Craft-well fine art, graphic design, prose and performance art through a variety of experiential opportunities. Fatme uses her art practice to explore and express her identities and Fern Facette is an Edmonton based fiber artist who has been weaving for nearly two decades. She's a passionately engaged artist who shares knowledge and encourages others to discover textiles. She founded Fern's School of textile craft in 2017, which is a place where fiber artists from across Canada meet to carry on the long tradition of sharing skills and knowledge. So thank you everyone for being here tonight. And now I'm going to pass things over to Fern and Fatme. 

Fern:  Awesome. Thanks, Hannah. Thank you so much for sharing those intros and getting us all settled here. Um, so I am acting as the host tonight. So I am going to be asking Fatme some questions about our project. And before we get into all of that, we we both wanted to say thank you to the Art From Here folks for inviting us to be part of this and welcoming welcoming us into the Edmonton arts community. That's very nice of you. And I also I have not had the chance to say Eid Mubarak to Fatme. Because I think it was yesterday, marks the end of Ramadan?

Fatme:  That's right, Fern, thank you so much. I appreciate that a lot.

Fern:  Yeah, you're welcome. I hope that it was a really awesome month for you and all your friends and family. Um, okay. So I'm getting started. I just wanted to back the bus way up and talk a little bit like about the start of our project. So it started, we - so Fatme and I we met back in 2017. At a an event called Tatreez and Tea. Tatreez is a traditional Palestinian embroidery which is like traditionally done to embroider dresses. So Fatme, sorry Fatme was a one of the organizers or the organizer.

Fatme:  One of many, many.

Fern:  And I attended the event and we met there and then shortly after that, we also met again at the Royal bison where she came by and we were like, Hey, I know you from this! And then that was your first time on a loom, right?

Fatme:  Yeah.

Fern:  So we met a few times and then in May of 2020, I got an email in my inbox and it was Fatme and she said, Hey, maybe you remember me, we met at this place and this place and I have this dream of weaving a kaffiyah so she gave me a brief description of what the kaffiyah was and asked me if it was possible. So I thought maybe just to give people some context. My first question is Fatme can you please for us describe the kaffiyah and maybe show us one?

Fatme:  Absolutely. Great question for great way to start. Thanks for introducing the project. And thank you again Hannah for introducing both of us and for hosting this space for us today. Um, yeah, so the kaffiyah, I do have my kaffiyah here today. I pulled it out for to show you all at Art From Here. So the kaffiyah is a very large, square scarf and it's made of cotton. It's woven cotton. And it's traditionally folded like from one corner of the square to the other corner of the square so it's becomes like a triangle shape. And traditionally it's worn over your head as a head covering to protect you from the elements like the sun. And there are many different forms of the kaffiyah. This one in particular is a symbol of Palestinian identity. It also symbolizes solidarity and resistance against the occupation of Philistine Oh, I wanted to mention that I'll likely be using Arabic words over the English words of Arabic words. So if I do that, I'll just describe it to you all in English in case you're not familiar with Arabic words. So Philistine is Palestine. Yes. So there are three distinct patterns in the kaffiyah. I'll show you all so you can become a little bit more familiar with them. We don't know exactly what each of the patterns mean. But we've done a lot of searching and there are some different ideas of what they mean. Primarily, this pattern here in the center. It's the largest pattern in the kaffiyah. It's said to symbolize a fishnet, and then there are these patterns towards the edges of the kaffiyah that are kind of stripy, more blocky and these are said to represent trade routes. And then my favorite pattern of the kaffiyah is the pattern on the edges, which is set to represent olive leaves. So I hope that's clear to everybody and you can see all of that. But yeah, that's a little bit of an introduction to the kaffiyah.

Fern:  Awesome, thank you. Yeah, that was totally clear could very much see even though you were like behind the scarf. So can you tell us where you got this kaffiyah and what does it mean to you?

Fatme:  Yeah, this gift. Yeah, I got it from the Hirbawi textile factory in Philistine or Palestine. The Hirbawi textile factory is in Hebron in Philistine and it's the only remaining factory that produces the kaffiyah in Philistine and it's founded and run by the Hirbawi family. So it's been in their family for generations. And this kaffiyah means so much to me, because it's from my homeland. It's actually one of the only things that I own that was made in my homeland. So I feel like it really connects me to my land and we have always had kaffiyahs in my home. I can't remember a time that we haven't had a kaffiyah in our home. But they were never made in Philistine. So this is the first kaffiyah particularly that I have owned that was made in Philistine and when I first got this kaffiyah, I was extremely protective over it. It felt like and it still does feel like very precious to me very priceless. One of a kind. So for probably the first six months that I owned it I actually had it hung in my room as an art piece and it was always there displayed. And it took me a few pep talks from my best friend for me to be able to take it down from the wall and actually use it and wear it and you know, cherish its intended use as a piece of cloth and a textile that I can wear and so now I do enjoy it as a scarf and I wear it around and I really love it. So even though I feel like it's so precious to me, it's still really important to me to be able to use it. And since it's made in Philistine it feels like a very rare piece to me. It's just rare I think to own things made and Philistine generally. So yeah, it's pretty special. And I can really tell I like from the first time that I like touched this kaffiyah from the Hirbawi textile factory. I could tell that so much mastery and skill had gone into weaving this cloth especially compared to the other kaffiyahs that I had owned, that were not made in Palestine. So this kaffiyah is, the cloth is quite robust and quite stiff so it has a stiff drape compared to the other kaffiyahs that are like pretty thin. And I feel like can wear down really quickly. This one I feel like will last me my whole lifetime and beyond. And I feel like the kaffiyah since it so distinctly symbolizes Philistine, I feel like I really identify with it myself and I feel a sense of belonging with this kaffiyah, like it was made in the place that I originated from where my family originated, and that's very empowering to me, but at the sa me time with this kaffiyah I feel like a sense of loss with it. Since the Hirbawi textile factory is the final place and Philistine that manufactures the kaffiyah, which is so wild to me, like something that's so distinct to Philistine there's only one remaining factory that produces it in our homeland. But yeah, because of that, I feel like that sense of loss and I think that really contributed to why I feel like this is such a precious piece and I have to protect it because I feel like it could be taken from me or lost very easily.

Fern:  Fatme you gifted me a kaffiyah and I think it took me like six months to take it out of the package. I felt similarly I just like it seemed almost too precious to wear but then it felt so great. It's such a like it's it's like it's so light and also so large to just like have it draped around you does feel so lovely. So thanks for sharing that. So like when you emailed me, this is kind of a fun check in, I've never asked you this question before like, How How did it come to you this idea of attempting to weave a kaffiyah by hand yourself?

Fatme:  I guess we never did talk about this. It's pretty funny to me. But it was super spur of the moment. I was just kicking it on my couch doing some research on kaffiyahs searching the web and I came upon the Hirbawi textile factory website for the very first time. And as I was browsing their website, I saw they have pictures and videos of how they produce the kaffiyah in their factory, and I saw a loom and I was like oh my gosh, this is how the kaffiyah is made? I know somebody who owns a loom! Because just a few months prior to that time in at the last in person Royal Bison [craft market] before COVID in December, we had run into each other and you had a loom at Royal Bison and that was my first time ever seeing a loom and then you also were inviting people to sit at the loom and you know, throw the shuttle a couple times. So I recognized I recognize the loom and I thought okay, I just kind of made that connection with you. And then, I guess because of that community outreach that you had been doing at Royal Bison Fern, I felt like weaving was sort of like it became something that I could see myself doing. I think before I didn't really understand what weaving was. And it didn't really seem like anything possible to me anything that I could do or take part in. But because you had made it so accessible and the way that you had just sat me down at loom and I was just like weaving straight straight away at Royal Bison it made me feel like this is possible for me I could sit down at a loom and weave something maybe. So while I was just like there looking at the Hirbawi textile factory website, I saw that possibility that maybe my own hands could create this very important symbol of my identity. And then up until that point, or like even past that point I had never woven before other than that one minute I spent at your loom at Royal Bison. So I think that I felt like I could email you after. Like, you know, recognizing that the kaffiyah is made on a loom. I felt like I could email you and ask like, is this possible? For me to hand weave a kaffiyah? I feel like that I even felt like I could contact you about that really spoke to your special ability Fern to make difficult things feel possible. I think the textile world often feels super inaccessible. So I'm just always really grateful for you. And your ability to make difficult things accessible for people and I was thinking about it today and I was like it's almost two years to the date that I first emailed you in May 2020. So yeah, here we are now in this journey of experimentation, always keeping an open mind with this project of attempting to hand weave a kaffiyah. And, yeah, it's been such a wonderful journey, to say the least.

Fern:  Absolutely. I could not agree more. Oh, yeah. Cool. So I wanted to share a little bit about how the project has evolved. So from that initial email, we're like, yeah, let's try this! With the caveat of me being like, I don't even know if this is possible. The looms that Hirbawi have are like huge, like power, mechanized looms. And the most complex loom that I have is an eight shaft floor loom. So to this day, we're still working out how we are going to do this and all along we've kind of known that it may not be exactly like the kaffiyah that you showed us earlier. But that's just part of our process. And like, yeah, the exploration. So that was like our original goal is for Fatme to weave a kaffiyah. And then as our project evolved, we thought, let's do four small projects, and each of them will be like kind of skill builders to get Fatme ready to weave this like huge gigantic scarf. And at first those other projects were, we hadn't really like put a lot of thought into them. We were just like, we'll weave a rug we'll we, we'll weave a placemat. But then as we started like getting all these books and looking at lots of like traditional dresses and rugs and books with pictures of Palestinian weavers, it was very like Yeah, I think very quickly evident. As soon as we entered that planning stage, we were like, well, what color are we going to use? Let's draw inspiration from all this stuff we're looking at. So the first project included kind of like two pieces and a study. And so what Fatme did was she did a lot of hand manipulation within those pieces. And I wanted that hand manipulation, so I'll show you this one here. But you'll recognize the motifs of the kaffiyah that are inlaid with into like the woven cloth, like all done by hand. I wanted to ask Fatme specifically about about the other ones since you shared already a little bit about the motifs of the kaffiyah. We have a large long table runner with this inlay design that Fatme designed which was inspired by amulets. So we've looked at a lot of embroidery and we noticed that there was a lot of embroidered amulets in dresses and so that was how the idea to bring those into the weaving came about, so I wondered if you could speak more about about those amulet inlay patterns? 

Fatme:  Yeah, absolutely. So in the table runner, we do have two amulets woven within the cloth like Fern said using my hands I manipulated the fibers to allow myself to weave those motifs within the larger cloth. And the amulet is a symbol of protection and good luck, and it's often utilized in many different cultures, in Palestinian culture it's utilized. It would sometimes be worn as jewelry, like an amulet would be worn as a necklace. And then as like throughout the progression of embroidery on Palestinian clothing, amulets would also be embroidered directly on the clothing itself. So while Fern and I were doing research on sort of clothing in the Galilee, in the Galilee region of Philistine which is the region that I'm from, it's the northern part of Philistine. We were taking a look at the dresses and the clothing of that part of Philistine and we noticed that the embroidery on the clothing was different than any embroidery I had ever seen on any dresses of Philistine clothing. And it's it was a lot more geometric and triangular than the embroidery I would typically see on dresses in Philistine. So we began to recognize those motifs that were embroidered as amulets. And they were often often embroidered on the dresses in the Galilee region. So Fern and I decided to incorporate the amulet motif into the table runner particularly because it's it's a symbol that connects me to my region in Philistine. And my region in Philistine, there's not very much about it preserved because the expulsion of the Palestinians in that area happened very, very early on into the Nakba or the catastrophe in Philistine so um very, very early on. There were no more Palestinian people left in that region of Philistine. So it was really, it still is very challenging for us to access any knowledge about my particular homeland and or my particular hometown in Philistine. But we did discover that this amulet was this or this symbol of the amulet was significant to that region. So yeah, we decided to incorporate it into the table runner. I had taken inspiration from the amulets that we are seeing embroidered on clothing in books and through museum collections. And I created my own amulet I had designed my own amulet for our work. And so yeah, that amulet on the table runner is a symbol of protection and good luck and it connects me directly to the motif that is often embroidered on clothing in the Galilee.

Fern:  Awesome. And then there's also a study of amulets that Fatme did that are are just so beautiful. I've got a nice little stack of them here. Sidenote, have you seen that totally adorable reality TV show on Netflix called Old Enough? No, like two like toddlers on errands to like, Oh little this little guy is gonna go to the fish market and like get some fish. That's so cute. It's adorable. And I noticed that they put that they put these like little amulet bags on them to protect them. I mean, they're totally protected by like the TV crew the whole time but as like additional protection t hey have little amulets. So that was a really cute way to see amulets being used in day to day life, as well. So can you share with us what the weaving process has been like for you in this first project and did anything change from start to finish or just what was what was weaving like for you? In this project?

Fatme:  Good question Fern. So when I think about the process, the first thing I think about is to describe it is long and slow. We have been working on this first project, the placemat table runner, and a series of amulets since June [2021]. So it's been almost one year that we have dedicated to these textile works. And throughout the process, there have been a lot of moments of celebration. I honestly feel like every moment that I spent on this work has been a moment of celebration. With every day that I build up our projects, and weave more and more it feels like yeah, just very exciting for us. Something really important for me in this past year was that weaving was something that was very consistent for me amidst a lot of change and inconsistency in the past year and I really felt a sense of sanctuary at the loom and at the studio. So I knew no matter what my week held for me that twice a week I'd be going into the studio, I'd be seeing Fern I'd be seated at my loom and engaging with this work. So although Yeah, the process has been very consistent and building up in a very beautiful way. Throughout the journey also in the past year, there's been a lot of discovery of myself, of my heritage, of weaving. And of note, there's been a lot of undoing work and redoing work and lots of restarting work as well. So there have definitely been challenges as I learn this practice of weaving. And in terms of anything changing since last year until now. I think that I have changed a lot. I have learned how to be slow. I've learned how to cultivate focus and presence in my mind and body as I work at the loom, which is not something that comes naturally to me. I've learned how to overcome failure and keep trying despite that, and I feel one year later, so much more resilient, and so much more capable of facing loss and working hard to reclaim my identity despite any despair and sorrow that I feel.

Fern:  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's definitely it is such a slow process that it does really allow a lot of space for just sitting still and and you know, just thinking about any number of things. So, yeah. Can you - what is my next question? Yes. So I have over the past couple years, I've witnessed you exploring your Palestinian identity in a multitude of ways. I've got I've got this issue of Hungry [Zine] here, where Fatme has some writing. So I've seen you explore your Palestinian identity through writing and through hanging out with your best friend Ranya and making food, Palestinian dishes, etc. So I was wondering, here's my question: Does weaving in particular offer something different than those other things?

Fatme:  That's a really good question Fern. Definitely, yeah. I- absolutely. Yes, weaving is distinct for me. I do reclaim my identity through many avenues and mediums, through my relationships in my life, through cooking, through writing, and of course, there's a lot of similarities between weaving and other things. Weaving, like cooking and writing, it requires a very refined skill set. And I feel like I'm very slowly cultivating that skill set for myself in the same way I would cultivate those skills for other things. But weaving offers something distinct for me because it allows me to slowly and incrementally create work with my hands and it grows before my eyes and the pieces can take me weeks or months to complete, and then once I've completed them, I can roll them off the loom and hold them in my hands. So at the end, there's something tangible and tactile that I'm holding in my hands that I can then preserve as an ancestor myself for my future generations. And weaving is also distinct because it's something that belonged to me and my people. It's something that is in my ancestry. It's something that was lost and taken from us. And that loss was so catastrophic, that even the knowledge of weaving existing in my hometown, let alone the practice of weaving, just the knowledge that weaving existed for us, that knowledge could not be passed down in my family anymore. So I now have to discover knowledge about weaving in Philistine through books, and like I'm not able to turn to my family or my ancestors to learn about that. And so when I'm sitting at my loom, I feel many things. Primarily I feel loss and I feel power. I feel powerful. I feel the power of taking something back that was mine. And that feeling of loss and power is a challenging juxtaposition.

Fern:  Yeah, yeah, I could see how that would be and that's also is so beautiful, what you said about weaving items that will be kind of heirlooms that you pass down for generations. I really love that. So, my second last question is what has been, sort of a two parter I guess, so feel free to choose one or the other. What has been the biggest challenge and the biggest achievement so far?

Fatme:  Yeah, there have been lots of challenges and lots of achievements. Um, the biggest challenge is definitely the loss. This work is emotionally painful for me. And I couldn't have ever anticipated the oceans of loss and heartbreak I would feel on a regular basis as I do this work. I think I imagined myself when I began this work as this fierce, strong, powerful Philistine woman resisting the settler colonial eradication of Palestinian identity, and that in this work, I would collect and preserve and share the fragmented textile knowledge in Philistine and I definitely am like strong, fierce and powerful in my identity. And this work of reclamation is inherently resistance against cultural erasure. But I didn't realize that holding the hand of reclamation inevitably, is grief. Because to need to reclaim something, I would have had to lose something. So I have a lot of questions about weaving in Philistine, about textiles and my heritage, and particularly about the kaffiyah, that I simply cannot find answers to so I have these curiosities and wonderings and I'm searching so hard to find knowledge. And I didn't fully comprehend how difficult it would be to gain the knowledge that I'm seeking about weaving in Philistine. And, actually to call it difficult is an understatement. It feels more like impossible, to try to gain that knowledge. So alongside the loss that I feel, I also feel this creeping fear that what if the knowledge I'm seeking is gone forever, and I can never find it? And to continue to overcome that grief every day and keep trying anyways, is extremely challenging. Yeah, so that's definitely been been the biggest challenge and it's an emotional challenge. There have been challenges practically as well as they weave the work and learn this new medium. But now to turn to something more happy. My biggest achievement, it's very, it's a very distinct memory, and something that makes me so happy. It was, it was December, and it was the last day that you and I would be meeting for the year before we were taking, I think it was a month break for the winter holidays. And we were finishing up the placemat and table runner. So I was hemming the edges I was tucking in the thread ends and we were doing all of that work to complete the pieces. We were steaming them and yeah, and Tony was there your dog the whole night cheering me on and also rushing us to the door because he was so eager to go home. But anyway, since we weren't going to be meeting for so long, we had decided that I would take the placemat and table runner, now completed, home with me so that I could share them with my family, with my friends that I'd be seeing over the holidays. And so that night, I got home like at around nine o'clock and I gathered my whole family in one room. And I said come see what we made. And I unrolled the table runner and the placemat. And they all looked at them and they're like wow, so amazing. They were so proud of our work. And my mom in particular I feel like looked at every single inch of the pieces and really appreciated them and just to celebrate with them and sharing the joy of the work that we had been doing for so many months was really special to me and I love that memory so much. So yeah, sharing the work with my family was a big achievement for me and I can't wait to continue to share our work with the people that we love.

Fern:  Yeah, that sounds like a really great moment. For sure. Awesome. So it's 6:40, do we have time Hannah for more questions?

Hannah:  Did you have another question on your list?

Fern:  I have one, I have one more question.

Hannah:  Yeah, let's let's do your last question. And then after that, we'll open it up to the audience for for if they have any questions for either of you.

Fern:  Okay, sounds good. So my last question for Fatme: what is your hope for this project? Or what is the ideal outcome?

Fatme:  I think this is the hardest question, because I feel like every day of this project has been a dream that's so dreamy that it couldn't have even dreamt it in my wildest dreams. So everything that the project has been, everything that it is already, is already my ideal outcome, and it's exceeding everything that I could have ever hoped for or imagined. But beyond cherishing the project every single day and how special it is, I do have hopes and I my ideal outcome is to continue enjoying my time with you Fern in this work and to continue to grow my skills as a weaver. I hope to continue to fail and to keep trying. I definitely hope that we can publicly exhibit and showcase our work once all four projects are completed in the near future and I hope that we can use the pieces that we weave, that we can make memories with them and you know, put them to their intended use. And of course my biggest dream is that I can someday return to my homeland that I can meet the Hirbawi family that I can learn about the kaffiyah from them and that I can meet Philistini handweavers and learn directly from them about the textiles of my homeland and weaving in Philistine.

Fern:  Amazing. Yeah, I hope all of those things will be true.

Fatme:  Thanks Fern.

Hannah:  Alright, so if anybody has any questions, feel free to pop them in the chat or you can ask them out loud if you're comfortable. Yeah, we got about like 10 minutes 10-15 minutes so we've got lots of time.

Fatme:  It looks like Ranya has her hand up, go ahead Ranya.

Ranya:  Thank you Fatme and thank you Fern this was so amazing. My quest- I can turn my camera on. I have two questions. I have one for each of you. This was so incredible. I'll guess I'll ask Fern first, Fatme I'll give you a breather. My question for you Fern is if there's anything you've learnt about being a weaver yourself through the process of these projects and maybe how the process of weaving the kaffiyah is different. And Fatme my question for you to think about as your drink water is your favorite way to wear the kaffiyah and why?

Fern:  I like that last one. Yeah for me, definitely, I mean, there's so many different ways that this project has impacted me as a weaver. Like for one I probably never would have tried inlay because weaving is so slow already to begin with, that like incorporating techniques that like compound that and make it even slower, I don't know if I have the patience for so like kudos to Fatme for making all of these projects that were so incredibly time consuming. And also like on a really personal level, it's made me start thinking about like, how can I incorporate a more personal narrative within my own work as well, because I probably could stay very much where I am now like just exploring pattern and color and like geometric shapes and stuff, which is primarily what my weaving is. But I'm seeing how powerful Fatme's work has been and how meaningful it is. It's made me ask myself how you know how can I ask these questions about you know, family and identity and stuff and kind of introduced that into my own practice. Which remains to be seen but I've got I got some ideas. 

Fatme:  Fern, that was so beautiful. I can't wait to see how that manifests. You're such a wonderful weaver. And of course, I admire your work so much. Ranya, thank you so much for the questions and for reminding me to drink water. My favorite way to wear the kaffiyah is as a hijab so I love to wear my kaffiyah as the scarf that I wear on my head. So yeah, I love to just like display it very prominently that way. I love to say this is who I am. I am a Philistini woman and I'm not afraid to say it. So yeah, my favorite way to wear it is as a hijab, which lots of people have probably seen me wear it that way. I see Lydia. Lydia! Thank you so much. Lydia says "this presentation is everything." You're so kind. "What was the process like with designing the amulet?" Great question, Lydia. So the process of designing the amulets, so I designed nine amulets in total. It took me a lot of time. So the amulets that I was looking at, on the Palestinian clothing were cross stitched, and to take something from a cross stitch format to a woven format doesn't really, like it doesn't translate very well. So I had to sort of figure out ways to design what I was seeing into a structure that worked for us and the work that we were on. So I spent a lot of time researching clothing in the Galilee region. And I studied the embroidery on the clothing, and identified the amulets and then with all of the various amulets that I was seeing either within books or in museum collections. I drew inspiration from all of that and then I designed my own amulets and then I think I designed like maybe 15 and maybe more, Fern and I selected our nine favorite amulets, but that process was also emotionally challenging because I was looking at clothing in Philistine from my region that was like no longer we had access to, like they were tucked away in museum collections, and I couldn't like they did not belong to us anymore. So yeah, it was a strange thing to learn about the embroidery in my region in the motifs of my region from like, you know, museums that had either, you know, like purchased the work for their collections, and that was kind of my only way of then being able to learn about that work.

Fern:  Any other questions?

Fatme:  Oh, Mitchell, go for it.

Mitchell:  Thanks for sharing so far. I have a question for Fatme. So far, your projects have been quite, as you say, slow and lengthy and the months have gone on. I don't know if you've had time to do this. But do you have any big dreams to create other things after this series? And if so, what are they?

Fatme:  Do you mean after the entirety of the project Weaving to Reclaim this complete? Or do you mean what's next for us in Weaving to Reclaim?

Mitchell:  Both if you haven't talked about the last project, but if not after that.

Fatme:  Yeah, so we have not talked about what's coming next for Weaving to Reclaim. Fern feel free to jump in here as well. So far we've just completed our first study, which is what we talked about tonight, that table runner, a placemat and series of amulets, and next we'll be exploring Palestinian clothing in our woven works so we plan to weave a belt, a stripe belt that will have a silky texture. That will be our next project. Clothing in Philistine is often belted whether it's for men or for women. So we're excited to explore that piece of Palestinian dress in our next project. And then for our third project, we are planning to weave two hijabs, so two scarves that would be worn as the hijab. The fibers will be hand dyed with natural dyes that were used in Philistine, with indigo and then a red color that we haven't chosen yet. Though so that project will be a cotton scarf that will incorporate the motifs of the kaffiyah but instead of hand manipulated inlay, this time they will be woven, you know with the rest of the cloth, so that project three will set us up and provide us with the foundation for our fourth and final project, which is hand weaving the kaffiyah itself. And yes, that will be our last project. Whew, really big thing handweaving the kaffiyah so definitely keep updated with our project journal on our Instagram, Weaving to Reclaim. We're excited to keep sharing the work with you all.

Hannah:  So, if that is everything. Nobody has any other questions. I think we'll close out for the evening. Your last chance All right. So thank you to both Fern and Fatme for sharing tonight, Fatme especially thank you for sharing your story through this project. This has been really really special. And I just want to give a quick reminder for anybody that hasn't checked out Fern and Fatme's writing on Art From Here, please do. And if you missed part of this talk or want to rewatch it, it'll be available in video and podcast form later this week. And yeah, stay tuned for the upcoming other parts of the Weaving to Reclaim project. You can follow them on Instagram @weavingtoreclaim and I just want to give a quick shout out, thank you to Latitude 53, The Mitchell Art Gallery, SNAP and Ociciwan for your support on this project. And that's everything. Thank you everyone so much for coming. Lots of nice comments in the chat. Thank you so much, everybody.

Fern:  Thank you.

Fatme:  Thank you.

Fern:  Thanks, Hannah.

Fatme:  Thanks, Hannah. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much.

Hannah:  Goodnight everyone.