Wednesday 23 November 2011

African Traditional Sewing

Great Grandparents

My great grandpa Leo was originally from Africa, he had very dark skin, and very curly hair. He came in with the Whalers back in the early 1900's and married my great grandma Louisa and created a family, they are now deceased and left this wrld with 12 children- my Grandma being the oldest, who now have peobably about a hundred grandchildren. The greatgrandparents were well known and very well respected in Rankin and many parts of the Kivalliq.

Cultural Change

I have chosen African Traditional sewing because I found their clothing to be very colourful and very unique. I have met an African before and she has shown me the different patterns and all the different colour combinations she used to make her clothing and I was fascinated of how simple it is to make them.

Many or most Africans create their own clothing with similar materials that we get from local stores. Their clothing has changed very much like the Inuit culture, from using land animals as a big part of their wardrobe to fashionable material using the same patterns. The Africans used several different types of fabric that is used to make traditional African clothing. They include Aso oke fabric and Adire fabric both of which are made by the Yoruba. Aso oke is the fabric and Adire refers to a tie dye process that is used to create patterns in the woven cloth. Other types of African textiles include Kente cloth, which is made by the Akan ethnic group, Barkcloth, Mudcloth, Kanga and Kitenge. In many of my blogs I talked about the different animals we used and it is quit similar to the African culture.
  
African Traditional Clothing
African Traditional Clothing

Since the climate is very different from the North, the type of clothing they wore were very opposite; Africans wore clothing that were loose fitting and comfortable because their climate in Africa is very warm, where as the Inuit used clothing to cover up every inch of their bodies to stay warm because of their cold climate.  
 Traditional Inuit Clothing

The Land
Africa
The land of the Africans is very different from our land, but our culture and our traditions are very importnat to our people. Come to think of it, when we watch something about Africans on TV, someone in my family always says; we like the Africans! how? well, they have a dry climate, where they use every bit of the animal they catch to eat. Like us, in the long winter days, it gets dry, and like the africans we use everybit of the animal. 
Nunavut
As I search for various things about the african traditional sewing, their was not much to offer in youtube. But I leanrt about their designs and costumes they use for special occations and celebrations.

1 comment:


  1. The Ghanaian culture makes two distinct sorts of fabrics referred to as Kente and Adinkra. Kente clothes are woven with silk and stitched with golden threads made from cotton giving it striking and vibrant patterns. The designs made on Kente are mostly abstract and geometric designs. Colours in clothes have different meanings like red stands for sacrifice, blue stands for sky etc. Another one is Adinkra clothes. They came from the Ashanti people. Adinkra gets its design from printing blocks and dyes. Artists carve a block of prints during a series of various symbols on the surface of the material . The symbols represent warfare and relationships of past.
    african dresses

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