MOROCCO TEXTILES TOUR
with Victoria Findlay Wolfe
2 – 16 November 2024 – SOLD OUT!
1 – 15 March 2025 – SOLD OUT!
Victoria Findlay Wolfe
Travel with artist Victoria Findlay Wolfe and explore the traditional Amazigh (Berber) crafts of Morocco at a grassroots level where womens cooperative ventures present textile creations melding age-old skills with new innovations.
In Marrakech we visit the exquisite new Yves Saint Laurent Museum featuring his fashion design as well as the Berber Museum that houses the Moroccan textiles and jewellery that inspired his work.
We then venture into the High Atlas Mountains and follow the ancient trade routes across the Tizi’n’Tichka Pass from Marrakech to the Sahara. Weavers of carpets and cloth, embroiderers and basket weavers are found in remote locations where they still employ their skills and maintain their traditional life style.
Next we make our way north to Fes and the blue city of Chefchaouen for a feast of colour and Islamic culture, finishing in the capital city of Rabat.
The tour includes hands-on experiences and demonstrations with local artisans. We see some exquisite embroidery techniques, learn to tie knots to make rugs and explore some eco-dyeing using Pomegranate skins or Rose Madder root.
MEMORY QUILT:
Focusing on simple shapes and admiring the buildings and landscapes of Morocco, Victoria will provide a kit of materials to help you create your own unique small memory quilt. She will talk about editing down your images to find basic shapes that we can needle turn appliqué for a graphic design. Then, using the patterns and tiles that we see on the trip as inspiration, we will create designs for big stitch quilting and embroidery stitches to add detail and texture to the piece. The memory quilt could be finished as a small piece or the start of a larger quilt, where you can easily add more blocks after the trip, on your own, in a quilt-as-you-go format.
Memory Quilt Kit will be provided. An extra list of suggested materials and sewing kit to bring along will be provided and we will have opportunities to purchase other wonderful things along the way which might be incorporated into your design including; buttons, braids, threads and more!
ABOUT Victoria Findlay Wolfe
Victoria is an international award winning artist & quilter. She teaches, and lectures on Creativity and Process, is a fabric designer, Author, and an online shop owner that sells her own products. Her quilts have traveled all over the globe, including Japan, Australia, London. She is proud to be a quilter, a mother and a wife, as family always comes first.
Victoria’s work balances between art quilts, traditional & modern quilting styles, and reflects her passion for bringing the fine art of quilting to the modern age. A farm girl raised in Minnesota, her influences are heavily based on her grandmother’s scrappy colorful quilts. Victoria considers her process as an artist/storyteller by incorporating memories of life, travels and nature to all that she does. A wandering spirit who loves to travel, Victoria looks forward to sharing her quilty stories with the tour.
MORE ABOUT THE TOUR
The tour is not an intensive workshop as there is too much to see and experience in Morocco, but time will be devoted to sharing ideas, discussing colour, pattern, materials and trialling techniques for future development as we work on our ‘Memory Quilt’ project.
Accommodation is provided in the most comfortable traditional guesthouses, where we enjoy the extraordinary delights of Amazigh food and hospitality. You will discover the highlights of Morocco and the indigenous Amazigh culture that evolves and continues largely through the extraordinary textiles traditions. We also enjoy music and a complete range of traditional cultural experiences and crafts.
Traveling with a small group of like-minded people and an experienced team of co-hosts the program offers an innovative and creative way to explore a new place that is stimulating, supportive and safe.