Time Management

While these massive order of pads has been quite an intense focus for Belekria, it hasn’t really stopped them from completing other smaller jobs.  The women have been good at delegating roles, so one of them is responsible for mending jobs that come in.  She will serve the customer and do the mending then get back into the pad factory line.

Another woman is in charge of keeping up with the lumber rolls.  I'm not actually sure if I’ve mentioned these before, but a lovely lady from NZ has a physiotherapy practice here in Dili and she sells lumber rolls.  She has been getting Belekria to sew them since Jan and tends to buy 5-10 a month.  They have even been taking extra work home with them in order to stay on top of things, so I have been impressed by their dedication.

They are always making school uniform sales and adjustments, as well as whipping up a few extra items to try and sell at markets.

Revisiting Xanana's Cultural Centre

 After many months of waiting, partly due to the wet season impacting on the harvesting of the palm leaf,  women at Atekru, on the island of Atauro finally finished the huge Bite mat ordered by the Xanana's Cultural Centre.   As the women at Belekria were quite busy, I took on the task of applying a Timorese handwoven tais.  The process of creating a wide bias binding was quite tediuos  and led to a few iron burnt fingertips, however the finished product looked great!
The mat is approx 6mx3m.
Samuel thought it would be nice to have Emmy representing her family/friends form Atekru who wove the mats.

And Israel and Xakira explored the children's section of the library, enjoying the huge pile of cushions, most of them sewn by Belekria

A New Library In Timor

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a friend of a friend, who was helping prepare for the official reopening of the Xanana’s reading room (Now Xanana's cultural centre and library)

At our first meeting Belekria was asked to sew some cushions for the children's area in the library.  They asked for a total of 24 cushions including 10 huge cushions at 1mx1m.  All with an applique animal on the top surface.  Most cushions produced here are single layer, but we sew/stuff a cushion and also sew a removable cushion cover to match.

Their second request was for me to organise a floor covering of some sort, which we decided would be better if was woven matting rather than a cloth/sewn rug.  We discussed some decorative options and have decided to use tais fabric to stitch an appliqued outline of East Timor across 3 large woven mats.

The third request was for a large crocodile puppet along the lines of a Chinese dragon, which children could hold up and move around. 

The fourth and final request was for me to re-stretch 2 small paintings which Xanana painted while he was in Prison.

WOW!

As you can imagine I’ve been quite busy myself as well as the sewing room being flat out stitching and stuffing cushions. J

The official opening was this past Sunday, and the cushions and crocodile were well loved. 

Unfortunately the woven mats were unable to be prepared in time, partly due to the impracticality of collecting and drying the required palm leaves during a rainy time, and partly as they are so huge themselves – 3 mats each 2.5 x 5.6m!  Hopefully they will be ready for Mid January when regular activities will be arranged at the Cultural Centre.

The sunset fair

“To market to market” to haul in some dosh :)
We arrived at the Christo Rei Sunset Market  around 3pm, jam packed into the tiny suzuki (cause our small truck is out of action again!)
 
4 women and a sewing machine in the back – a bit tight.  But they were so sweet about it.  I guess its probably as much room as you get in a “mikrolet” (public transport mini bus). 
When we had unpacked ourselves we began the search for our spot.  There was a little confusion at first, as we could not find our name on any of the canvas tents that had  been set up….However after a few phone calls we discovered the organisers had made an error, so we did in fact have a location to set up our stall in….Its just that they had given Sinta a new name – Angelicca.  We thought that was funny.
Heres some pics of our products all displayed on the table.  We also had a number of bags and uniforms hanging up.
         
The night was a bit slow…. A number of people were very interested in the sewing group, but we only sold $26 worth of stuff.  It doesn’t seem like much for all the effort it takes packing and travelling and unpacking and sitting…. But it is worth it to show the women how a market works, and how people like the products they are producing.   We used some of the 7 hours we were there, to chat about what else we could make to sell.  The problem is not really about more ideas, just about having the supplies, time and skills needed to produce them all!

Visiting the Ermera Library

  
I had the pleasure of visiting the library at Gleno. We were impressed with the place before we even entered the front door!  And then the kids room was just stunning!  Our gorgeous cushions made the room so cheerful!
 And a whole stack of our cloth books were on the shelves just waiting to be picked up by small hands.
We had a good look at the whole place and highly recommend a visit if your in the area.  You can see more info about what they do on  The Ermera Library's website

This is one of their photos showing a librarian using one of our cloth books.  They visit the hospital each week and have a short program with new mums about the benefits of reading to their children.  Its a great program and we are proud to be connected with them!