By James Lane of Colby College
One chilly spring afternoon, all of the Round River Patagonia students, as well as our instructors, crowded into the warmth and coziness of Jose and Claudia´s house. We were there to learn some embroidery from a local woman, Marisol, who, as we had learned the night before, was a bit of a local celebrity.
The night before, we had all watched a documentary about the art of embroidery in Chilean Patagonia. In the documentary, many local women, including Marisol, talked about how they had learned to embroider from their mothers and grandmothers, and showed some of the beautiful pieces they had made. The documentary also talked about how said women had used their embroidery to come together as a community to take a stand against a proposed hydrodam project in the region, which, if successful, would have flooded many of their lands. Thankfully, in no small part due to the activism and hard work of the women, the project was ultimately scrapped.
A few minutes after we all had gotten settled, Marisol arrived. In almost no time at all, Marisol was handing out fabric, needles, and embroidery thread, and we all got started. Many of us embroidered squares of white cloth into napkins, while others went to work embroidering their clothing! It came as no surprise that we were nowhere as near as good or as fast at embroidery as the women we had seen in the documentary the night before, but we persevered and kept at it.
With everyone focused intently on their embroidery, the room settled into almost complete quiet, interrupted only by quiet conversation, the crackle of the woodstove, and the occasional sound of rain on the roof. People were embroidering all sorts of different patterns, such as plants, animals, words, and more. I myself worked on embroidering the image of Calafate, a shrub common to Patagonia. As time went on, snacks were handed out, and before we knew it, 4 hours had passed and it was time to make dinner! We said goodbye to Marisol, and were able to happily look back on several hours spent making art and learning about the local Patagonia culture of embroidery.
