Women help stitch together refugee lives

By Darius Crolle and Shavella Saint Pruex
Bengal News Reporters 

Stitch Buffalo has brought together a variety of women from different parts of the world to share one common skill: stitching.

        Dawne Hoeg and Shelby Deck, co-founders of Stitch Buffalo, have been hard at work for the past year and a half by teaching a group of refugee women sewing, beading, and embroidering. They meet up from 9 a.m. to noon every Thursday at the Concerned Ecumenical Ministry on 286 Lafayette Ave.

From left, Karma Tamang, Tila Bastola, Dawne Hoeg and Kala Nijoula

With the skills the refugee women are taught, they create prayer pouches, Buffalove heart pins, and another displayable art pieces.  

            Stitch Buffalo came about after adjunct professor at SUNY Buffalo State and textile artist, Dawn Hoeg, noticed many refugees and immigrants on the West Side. She wanted to improve the refugee community by using her textile design background to bring refugee women closer together.

            “We went to refugee resettlement agencies with these post cards saying we’re starting this beading and embroidering group and to send us people who they knew might be interested,” said Deck.

Shelby Deck, on creating Stitch Buffalo:

            However, the beginning didn’t go as they planned. No one attended their first class, there second class had three women from the Congo, and the third class consisted of five people. From there on, the class size began to grow.

            The Stitch Buffalo workshop, which is entirely funded by Hoeg and Deck, has an interesting way of distributing funds to the refugee women for their work. 

            “Everything we do sells for money, and out of that money 70 percent goes back to the woman who made that piece. It doesn’t go into a pool but rather goes to the individual women,” said Deck.

            This leaves Hoeg and Deck with 30 percent of the profits, which isn’t sufficient to cover the expenses. “It doesn’t cover the money for rent, the floss, fabric, beads, and other expenses,” said Deck.

            However, as Stitch Buffalo continues to grow and gain support from the West Side communities, Deck and Hoeg hope to receive grant money from foundations.

            “We have established that there is a need for this. We have established that this is beautiful and that people respond to it. We don’t want to see this go away. I don’t think anyone who is being touched by this would want to see it go away,” said Hoeg.

            One of the ways Hoeg and Deck plan on increasing business and raising awareness is by having pop-up events at different craft shows. Recently, Stitch Buffalo had a hands-on gallery exhibition at Buffalo State. That was its first ever gallery showcase, where they were able to display their work to the public and the Buffalo State community.

            “Stitch Buffalo is such a wonderful support system for immigrant women in that it provides a safe place to gather, opportunity to get to know other women from the community, and utilize their amazing hand skills,” said Carol Townsend, associate professor at Buffalo State.

            Stitch Buffalo will also be displaying and selling items for the upcoming holiday seasons. It will be setting up table stands outside of the workshop. The stands are fully decorated with various unique art pieces that were made by the refugee women.

            “We make a beautiful booth. For the one we are in this weekend we have beautiful lights hanging on the branches of trees and are selling some of the cuffs and pouches that we make,” Hoeg said.

     Most of the women who attend the Stitch Buffalo workshop don’t speak English very well, making it more difficult for the women to communicate with Hoeg and Deck. Nevertheless, Hoeg and Deck have found interesting ways of communicating with them during the workshops.

            “We have a lot of visual cards that we’ve been using to teach the women. We also use a lot of show-and-tell and hand gestures,” Hoeg said.

            Communicating among the refugee women was one of the most challenging roadblocks for Hoeg and Deck. However, this is one of the reasons they chose the idea of stitching, which involves nonverbal communication.

            “Communication is kind of the key of this whole thing. You don’t have to share a language in order to show somebody how to do something. Most of the three hours of our class we have no idea what they’re saying, ” Deck said.

All of the women who attend Stitch Buffalo are living on the West Side, which is known to be a multicultural melting pot for refugees.

“I think it’s great for people to travel all around the world and experience different cultures; I think that’s a wonderful experience for people to have,” said Deck.

Deck, however, doesn’t have to physically travel all around the world to experience different cultures. The women at Stitch Buffalo provide her with that luxury.

“I don’t have to leave the country," Deck said. "I travel all around the world every Thursday with this group of women.”