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Discover the world of textiles

Pieces: Celebrating Textile March 27 – 29
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Pieces: Celebrating Textiles is a new festival in downtown Courtenay.

Pieces: Celebrating Textile showcases contemporary thinking on “slow” textiles and clothing March 27 – 29 at the Florence Filberg Centre.

There will be interactive presentations, displays, demonstrations, conversations and masses of inspiration.

Explore the relationships between local history, cloth making, natural materials, stitch narratives, global textiles and what is in your closet.

Mingle with and celebrate the vast talents of makers and artisans on Vancouver Island.

The gala opening features the acclaimed Charllotte Kwon from Maiwa speaking on “Slow Clothes.”

Saturday opens with an odyssey of Coast Salish and other First Nation’s textile history. A variety of displays, demonstrations and surprises follow. Later, Kwon joins the Global Conversation with insights from African, South Asian and Latin American inspired social enterprises.

Provocative installations created by North Island College students reveal the underbelly of mass produced fast fashion issues.

On Sunday, author Leanne Prain, born and raised in the Comox Valley speaks on stitching cloth and making meaning. Prain believes, “that weaving a tale or dropping a thread can take on new meaning when we start to see textiles beyond the narrow scope of functional objects but instead, as an important part of the human experience.”

That is followed by a fashion romp through the world of upcycling, thrifting and repurposing.

To close, “Endnotes” touches on the textile windings of shrouds, material memorials and green burial.