Fibre optics Exhibition asks viewers to take a closer look at locally made textiles By: Alan Small Posted: 7:00 PM CST Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022

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This article was published 22/02/2022 (939 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

February in Manitoba is a time for wool socks and sweaters.

What with the seemingly endless Environment Canada weather statements and alerts about blizzards and frigid temperatures, warm woollen outerwear has become almost as prevalent as face masks.

While woollens will likely be sported by those who visit the C2 Centre for Craft this week, it’s the ones on display on pedestals and tables that deliver the warm fuzzies to those who enjoy locally made products and celebrate the people who make them.

The One Year, One Outfit Challenge, presented by the Pembina Fibreshed, includes textiles made since Jan. 31, 2021, within a 200-mile radius of the Pembina Valley.

“The purpose was to take a year and really dig into what it takes to make our clothing,” says Anna Hunter, a co-director of the Pembina Fibreshed, an advocacy group for Manitoba fibre producers, manufacturers and dyers. “It really gave us an opportunity to connect and to bring farmers and artists and users together.”

That means every strand of wool that is on display until Saturday has been shorn from a Manitoba sheep, milled and spun in the province and dyed with products created from plants grown here.

The perfectly timed pop-up show, which opened on the eve of yet another blizzard on Feb. 18, is about more than displaying the skills of Manitoba crafters.

”Most of us have a small connection to the local food movement. Either we’ve been to a farmers market or maybe we know a farmer or we know when or where we can access local food,” Hunter says.

“Most people don’t even consider the fact that textile agriculture even exists, that the clothing we wear at one point probably started from the ground.”

The Pembina Fibreshed challenged its members to create one garment and two accessories from scratch for the show.

Hunter and her husband Luke raise sheep and operate Manitoba’s only wool-processing mill at Long Way Homestead near Ste-Geneviève, about 50 kilometres east of Winnipeg.

The homestead’s mill cleaned, spun and dyed most of the woollen textiles in the exhibition, and the Hunters sell skeins of yarn from their sheep, which are shorn by hand every spring.

‘We use nothing but hot water and a small amount of biodegradable citrus soap to clean all our fibre, and that grey water goes right back into our system,” Hunter says. “Washing wool means you’re taking dirt and lanolin and manure out of it and that goes right back into our pasture systems.”

She says about 90 per cent of Canada’s raw textiles, such as wool and linen, which is made from flaxseed, are exported, with Canada importing the finished products, whether they are wool sweaters or tuques, or linen garments.

“The textile agriculture and the textile-manufacturing industry is almost non-existent and that was the impetus for this project,” Hunter says. “Let’s talk about what it takes to source and make our clothing locally and some of the challenges within that, but also see the opportunity for how we can grow that industry and how we can build a resilient fibre economy.”

The exhibition also includes leather-based goods, such as vests, moccasins and wallets from elk that were hunted in the province, their hides tanned and tailored by Manitobans.

It has led to lovely knitted garments but also an appreciation for Manitoba’s ancestors, whether they were settlers who made all their own clothes or Indigenous people who found a use for almost every part of a wild animal they hunted successfully.

Among the pieces on display at the C2 Centre is a colourful wool tunic by Winnipeg craftswoman Maureen Winnicki Lyons. She used wool from more than 20 different breeds of sheep, as well as Angora goats and a host of dyes created by Manitoba flowers.

Unlike many knitted pieces in the exhibition, a felting process was used to create the woolly vest.

“I have a strange fascination with different breeds of wool,” Winnicki Lyons says during the exhibition’s debut. “I wanted to incorporate all the different wool that we have available in the province, because every breed of sheep has its own wool and all wool is useful for something.”

Hunter and other crafters make their own dyes from flowers they grow, such as Japanese indigo, tansy, goldenrod and even onion skin, which Hunter says make a golden colour.

To get different hues in their yarn, Winnicki Lyons and Hunter even add rusty nails recycled from old fence posts to the dyes.

While the exhibition’s theme and garments are eye-openers for visitors, Pembina Fibreshed’s crafters learned about the time-consuming process of making clothing the hard way.

Winnicki Lyons remembers the “laborious process” of fitting in more yarn in her tunic so there wouldn’t be gaps.

“We’ve travelled so far away from the source of our things in every way in life that this is just bringing it back home,” she says. “That’s something we need to, as a society, as a civilization, appreciate.”

alan.small@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @AlanDSmall