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Sewing Circle Gathering: Spinning Wool and Making Lace

SubjectPortrait of Fatima Vejzovic (Bosnian)

SubjectPortrait of Florence Betgeorge (Assyrian)

Date2013 May 11

Mediumborn digital video

DimensionsDuration: 1 Minutes, 54 Seconds

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

CopyrightIn Copyright

Object number2015.196.750.1

DescriptionVideo of Fatima Vejzovic spinning wool, Florence Betgeorge making lace, and another Bosnian woman talking to Fatima in Bosnian at a Sewing Circle Project gathering at the Institute for Community Research on May 11, 2013.

NotesSubject Note: The Sewing Circle Project began in 2007 as an initiative to encourage production, marketing, and sustainability of traditional crafts among the many immigrant and refugee communities in the Greater Hartford area and across the state. Developed by the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program (CCHAP) based at the Institute for Community Research (ICR) in Hartford and at the Connecticut Historical Society after 2015, the project supported the remarkable traditional arts of these newcomers. Members of the Sewing Circle met regularly at ICR and the Hartford Public Library to work on their art forms, learn new skills, and share coffee and conversation. This cooperative environment fostered social interaction among the artists and public audiences, respected and encouraged their cultural heritage and artistic traditions, stimulated literacy improvement, and helped to develop marketplaces for their artwork. CCHAP organized gatherings, exhibits, workshops, marketplace events, promotional materials, and educational activities for the group’s participants. While most of the artists experienced war, trauma, and dislocation, they continue to practice their cultural heritage and artistic traditions, blending these with current experiences and materials to create artwork that is both beautiful and functional. Even when immigrants and refugees embrace a move that takes them to a more stable and prosperous place, resettlement poses challenges of physical and psychological adaptation. Many new Americans have eased transition by continuing, recreating, or reinventing familiar art forms. For many members of refugee communities now living in New England, practicing their familiar arts of weaving, knitting, basket making, lace making, music, dance, and storytelling helps them to cope with the trauma of the genocide and displacement their families have suffered.

Engaging with public audiences has given project participants a chance to improve their English-speaking skills and broaden their social networks and support systems. The project has been a great success because it brings some additional income to the artists and also because they have become friends and co-workers sharing techniques, styles, and supplies as they create their unusual and exquisite textiles. In collaboration with Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services and the Hartford Public Library, the project is expanding to offer small business training to the artists, thanks to grants from the Aurora Foundation, the Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund, the Aetna Foundation, and the Knox Foundation.

Subject Note: The Institute for Community Research (ICR) is an independent nonprofit organization which conducts applied research and community enhancement programs to promote equal access to health, education, and cultural resources. ICR's location within the community reflects its mission, which emphasizes the use of original research as a way to address serious contemporary issues and problems while strengthening community-based resources in areas of health, education and culture. CCHAP began at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford in 1991, continuing there until 2015 to research, assist, and present the state’s community-based artists along with their community histories and heritage activities.

Biographical Note: Fatima Vejzovic is a skilled weaver of traditional Bosnian wool flat-weave carpets made on a simple wooden loom constructed by family members in her home. She learned this traditional craft from mothers, aunts, neighbors, and friends in her village, using wool from sheep raised on their farm. After the war Fatima and many weavers worked for Bosfam, a successful crafts cooperative established in Tuzla to assist women with income-generating projects while providing therapeutic and social support. Their work has appeared in catalogues selling the carpets internationally. Fatima arrived in Hartford with her family in 2002. Greater Hartford is now home to over 10,000 Bosnians, most coming as refugees from the war in the former Yugoslavia. For the women in the community, many of them widows, continuing to practice their familiar arts of weaving, knitting, and crochet lace helps them to cope with the trauma of the genocide their families suffered. Fatima’s art works include large floor carpets as well as smaller weavings, and she fashions the woven tapestry fabric into bags, purses, and pillows. Fatima also makes hand-knitted clothes, crochet lace tablecloths, and Bosnian socks worn inside the home. She won a 2021 Connecticut Office of the Arts Fellowship in Folk and Traditional Arts.

Bosnian flat-weave carpets, called ćilimi after their Turkish antecedents (kilims), adorn all parts of the home – floors, walls, chairs and sofas, tables, and beds. The weavings also serve an important function as prayer rugs for these Muslim families. While sometimes made commercially with chemical dyes, the traditional rugs woven by village women still use wool processed by them and colored with natural dyes. Ćilimi designs maintain their Turkish roots but also show European influences stemming from Bosnia’s close connections with Vienna in the early 20th century. Fatima weaves traditional geometric patterns in seemingly endless variations, and she also enjoys adding floral motifs and creating new pictorial designs. Fatima does not use templates or printed patterns – her designs are created as she starts a weaving on the loom, depending on what colors of wool she has available. She developed a new idea for a weaving depicting a whimsical goat, that she made into bags and wall hangings that have become very popular. Fatima also weaves lettering and names into a ćilim, creating a narrative feature that led to a multi-year commission to produce commemorative banners in the organization’s colors for the Aurora Foundation’s retiring board members.

Through a partnership with Clatter Ridge Farm, whose sheep graze on the grounds of the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut, Fatima has created a series of weavings using their high-quality Shetland wool. The undyed wool gives the rugs a beautiful softness and durability as well as subtle variations of natural color.

Fatima taught her daughter, Fikreta Muratovic, to weave and they worked together for the Bosfam enterprise in Bosnia. As part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 2005, Fatima taught loom weaving to a younger Bosnian woman in Hartford, helping to pass on this beloved tradition in their new home. Fatima has given weaving workshops to Hartford students at four schools through Hartford Performs, and to students from Miss Porters School and the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. Fatima has worked with three interns from Trinity College through the Sewing Circle Project. As part of the Hartford Performs program for teaching artists in schools, Fatima has taught the basics of loom weaving to students in Hartford, Windsor Locks, and Miss Porter’s School.

Fatima was one of the founding members of the Sewing Circle Project, which began in early 2007 as a partnership to encourage cultural sustainability among the many immigrant and refugee communities in the Greater Hartford area and across Connecticut. Engaging with public audiences has given Fatima opportunities to improve her English-speaking skills, broaden her social networks, and showcase Bosnian cultural traditions. She has demonstrated and sold her work at the Hartford Public Library World Refugee Day; Hartford Open Studio Weekends; the University of Connecticut; the Hill-Stead Museum; the Vermont Folklife Center; the American Folklore Society; the New York Folklore Society; the West Hartford Art League; Ten Thousand Villages; several local house parties; and at the Billings Forge Farmers Market. She enjoys creating new designs for private commissions. Fatima’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Institute for Community Research, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut Office of the Arts Gallery, and the Clare Gallery.

Biographical Note: Florence Betgeorge was born in northern Iran in the Azerbaijan Province, a traditionally Assyrian Christian area. Assyrians speak a language similar to ancient Aramaic, and trace descent from the Babylonians of Mesopotamia. Florence attended Catholic school in Iran, also learning textile arts from the French nuns who ran the school. After her marriage and a move to Tehran, diplomats and other wealthy patrons commissioned baby clothes, bedcovers, and trousseaux from her. Persecution of Assyrians intensified in Iran after the fall of the Shah and during the Islamic Revolution from 1978-1982, and Florence and her family immigrated to the US in 1984. They settled in New Britain, CT where Assyrians have established a strong community with a church and a cultural center. Florence creates exquisite embroidery, lace, decorative home textiles, and she can tailor any garment. Sharokin Betgevargiz, Florence’s daughter, learned lace-making with her mother as part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 2007-2008 and continues to create lace earrings, necklaces, and table covers, sometimes using unusual threads made of metal. Florence has participated in many activities of CCHAP’s Sewing Circle Project from 2007. CCHAP has displayed her work in several exhibitions. One of her knotted lace pieces is in the collection of the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, 2015.217.0, as well as a hand-picked handkerchief, 2015.232.0.

Florence makes lace using only a needle and 2 or 3 ply fine cotton thread, in a French style she learned from nuns. This style creates knots that secure the delicate thread as the lace strands are built up, whereas in crochet lace the stitches are continuous and unravel if pulled. She describes her lace technique as “needlework” or dentelle in French. Her special addition to this technique creates writing in lace, with scripts in Aramaic.

Additional audio, video, and/or photographic materials exist in the archive relating to this artist.

Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.

Status

Not on view