ETCA means El Transito Center for the Arts and is located in El Transito, a small fishing village on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. ETCA was founded by a lovely Korean-American woman who fell in love with this village and has devoted 15 years to providing learning via the ETCA library, a sewing room, an expansive covered patio for activities and lodging for volunteers. Her generosity has provided reading, poetry, arts and crafts, dance, sewing, yoga, and other free activities.
The name of the workshop was “Visible Mending on Denim” and consisted of 3 parts: learning about denim fabric, learning basic stitches and then actually visually mending some denim. What should have lasted about an hour and a half, happily extended to several hours.
This workshop was not my first at ETCA, but this level of motivation and creativity felt different. The women already had basic sewing skills so felt comfortable around fabric, needles, and thread. In addition, they were interested in acquiring new skills that could be useful to themselves and their families. And finally, female comraderie is always a fun escape from daily routine.
The introduction to denim included playing with small samples of denim. Fraying the edges showed the woven white threads and the blue threads. Vocabulary was fun to learn in Spanish and English, and as always, learning is made easier by doing and engaging. The horizontal white threads are the “weft” of the denim fabric. The indigo blue vertical threads are the “warp” of the fabric. The unique denim weaving, the various weights, and other parts were easy to learn while handling the fabric samples.
The second part was learning different stitches. They were practiced on canvas and with thick embroidery thread. The purpose was to learn them, label them and then have the obligation to teach them to others – – kind of a “pay it forward” community obligation. The stitches included running, back, slip, ladder/invisible, chain, and blanket.
The third and final part was using individual creativity and the newly learned stitches to visibly mend denim. Some participants had brought their own jeans that needed mending, while others worked with denim pieces and contrasting print fabrics.
This final part was full of friendly help, laughter, suggestions, jokes and even dread of going back home. Fueled by a tropical fruit salad, cookies, cake, juice and coffee, we could have happily stitched well into the night.
Already I am looking forward to a third workshop with the ladies of ETCA!
