Quilt mission will help HIV-positive women

VANESSA WRAIGHT
A Napier rug store is changing its usual attire to exhibit textiles from Laos.
Three Wellington women with a passion for the textile work of Laos have brought their unique blankets, room dividers and baby-carriers to Napier to exhibit and raise money for the women who created the intricately patterned works. Antique quilt collector Susan Baragwanath, teacher Sarah De Renzy and editor of New Zealand Quilter magazine Anne Scott hope to raise money for HIV-positive women in Laos by selling the quilts those women have created.
Mrs Baragwanath first went to Laos with UNICEF last year and during her travels noticed the poor quality of product being created by the Laos crafts people. They had been given industrial sewing machines by Japanese companies but they didn't have the knowledge to operate the equipment and produce quality crafts.
So Mrs Baragwanath devised a plan to teach the Laos people to create quality crafts that people would pay top dollar for. She said HIV-positive women are ostracised in Laos, the government tells their employer as soon as they are diagnosed and they immediately lose their jobs.
While Mrs Baragwanath gave one lesson, she had a better idea and called on her highly skilled friends, Mrs De Renzy and Mrs Scott, to assist in the tutoring process.
The three friends booked a trip to Laos and in March this year spent time teaching the locals in the capital, Vientiane, the intricacies of sewing. They took with them metres of fabric, rotary cutters and other sewing implements, all donated by New Zealand sewers.
Their mission, to teach a group of HIV-positive women, and one man, the finer details of sewing. After crash courses in sewing the women returned home, but booked a trip again for August to check on the sewers' progress.
On their return trip they were impressed with the skills the women and man had picked up, and with the incredible bags they were creating and selling at the local markets. Previously they had been earning $8 a month, in August they had doubled that.
Mrs Scott said they had reverted to one of the original forms of patchwork when the fabric began to run out, cutting out small pieces to join together to create patterns. "They were amazing,"she said.
They moved on to creating other items and returned to their traditional craft work, making room dividers, blankets and baby-carriers. It is these works that the three women went in search of during their most recent visit and have a collection of 29 on display, and for sale, during the Napier exhibition.
Mrs De Renzy said every piece told a story and there were stylish examples of complicated dying and weaving involved in some of the blankets.
A percentage of the proceeds from the sale of the textiles will be given to the New Zealand Laos Textile Training Project.