Introducing Efie

We caught up with Sarah Devine founder of fabulous brand Efie, who has just returned from Ghana to visit her weavers …

Who are the ladies you work with in Ghana?
We work with a talented group of ladies, all of whom have been selected for their skills and dedication to their art, in collaboration with our head weaver, Mary. Mary has been weaving for almost thirty years and has trained many of the ladies in the area. They are all based in the bustling market town of Bolgatanga, just south of the border with Burkina Faso and range in age from 25 to 55.

How did you come to work with them?
I had been working in Bolgatanga for a children’s rights organisation so I knew the area well and was familiar with the local craft before I created Efie. I first approached Mary at the Weavers’ Association and we took it from there. We went from one weaver to two weavers, to five and now we have ten! We like to call the group our mini cooperative and we hope to build on what we have already established in the coming years.

What advantages do they gain from working with you?
Aside from the obvious fair, stable income that they receive, the mere act of bringing weavers together enhances their work & helps create a sense of camaraderie and shared burden. Many of the ladies we work with have their own small workshops that they weave from, or weave from home. The early stages of prepping the threads to make a cloth is extremely complicated, laborious and at times tedious. When we receive orders, the ladies can come together and help each other with the early stages making the whole process much more enjoyable! It also gets done a lot quicker when there is help at hand. New friendships have been forged as well as weaving stories shared.

Mary, our head weaver has over 30 years’ experience and when monitoring work, she can immediately spot an error, explain why it has happened and teach the weaver how to prevent it from happening again. Mary is also very meticulous in her preparation of the threads and this has been fundamental to us being able to produce cloth that is sellable here in the UK. Her eye for detail, patience and tenacious attitude has been taken on board by the other weavers and so the standard of weaving across the locality is steadily increasing as a result. “Not everyone has the patience to weave”. Mary has said this to me many times over the years and she is right! The best cloths are produced by those who possess real patience.

What kind of materials does the community source in order to weave the front panel?
The front panel is made up of polyester threads, bought locally at the Bolgatanga market. Sadly, the Ghana cotton industry has given way to imported threads, however, this is all about to change with the government’s new plan to increase cotton yields and get organic cotton on the agenda. Fingers crossed this materialises and we will eventually be able to not only have an ethical product but a wholly eco-friendly product too.

Do the women use any particular techniques to weave the front panel?
Contrary to weaving in the south of Ghana, weaving in the Upper East of Ghana is done by women, on simple iron looms that produce a cloth of a maximum width of around 40cm. They traditionally create horizontal and vertical stripe patterns using all different types of weave depending on the desired pattern but, the grosgrain cover is made from the simplest plain weave technique that we are all familiar with.

Who pairs the front panel with the linen reverse?
Once the cloth has been quality checked in Ghana and is ready for shipping, our trusty project manager, Yakubu, sends the cloth back to the UK. After being checked for quality, the cloth is cut and prepped to take to our seamstress, Sev. Sev is based up the road from Efie HQ in East London so, I’m on my bike a few times a month dropping off and picking up orders. Our fair trade, organic linen reverse is sourced from the wondrous ethical people over at Organic Cotton Biz who work with a cooperative in Kerala, India.

You can view the whole Efie collection here.