Truly South African 'Shweshwe'

Shweshwe is the fabric not the dress. I have given you the link to read up about the history of Shweshwe and I have added this information for my blogger friends who are fabric artists and there are a few. In the early 70's when I was somewhat of a hippy child, Shweshwe was very popular amongst the hippy crowd. Bare in mind that it was during the apartheid era and white and black people just didn't mix, well most didn't, so wearing african clothes was not the norm. I was living in Lesotho at the time with my then husband who was a musician and I discovered this material while we were there. The material is very stiff with starch when you buy it, but after a couple of washes it becomes really soft and because it is pure cotton it is extremely comfortable to wear. My wardrobe consisted of denim, muslin, cheese cloth, white cotton and Shweshwe.

I used to make a lot of my own clothes in those days so I made skirts, pants, and blouses from Shweshwe. The material comes in lots of different colours now but in those days it was only in blue and brown and of course indigo blue is one of my very favourite colours so everything I had was in the blue.