By Michael Joel-Hansen

Local area woman hoping to teach others about Métis Sash weaving

Oct 18, 2018 | 12:50 PM

A Prince Albert-area woman is looking to pass on her knowledge about a historical art.

Patricia Sinclair, who lives in St. Isidore de Bellevue, will be teaching classes about how to weave a Métis sash in the traditional way.

“I’ve been weaving for a quite a few years and Métis sashes since the mid-nineties,” she said.

Sinclair learned how to weave a Métis sash using traditional methods when she was enlisted by the Duck Lake Regional Interpretive Centre to weave sashes for display at that facility.  

“It was then that I discovered that there was a difference between the sashes being woven in the 1950s and the sashes being woven at the turn of the century or before that,” she said.

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Sinclair wanted to weave the sashes for the centre in the traditional method, which involves doing so by hand, but was not able to figure out how at the time. Eventually, Sinclair was able to find someone who had the knowledge about how to weave the sashes in a traditional manner after reading an article in a magazine.

“I found a woman in the States, her name was Jessie Clemons, and I wrote her a letter … and she knew how to weave these things,” she said.

The two women were eventually able to meet up when Clemons passed through while on a trip to Yukon, and Sinclair was able to learn the craft.

“It took me two years to weave my first sash,” she said.

Sinclair has been teaching classes for a number of years. The first local class starts Monday, Oct. 29, with classes continuing into November. Besides teaching classes in St. Isidore De Bellevue, she will be hosting classes at the Saskatoon farmers market on Thursday nights starting Oct. 25.

Learning how to weave sashes via the traditional method can take some time. Sinclair believes the average person needs around three classes before they get it. Making a sash using the method which Sinclair is teaching is an art she considers to be an endangered one.

“I thought I’d like to pass this on to somebody else,” she said.

MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: mjhskcdn