Mel, happy as a clam on her beloved Cape Breton Island.
Mamie's Schoolhouse was founded by ecological fibre artist Mel Sweetnam, a juried member of the Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design and the Canadian Bookbinders & Book Artists Guild, founder of the Unama’ki/Cape Breton Fibre Trail, and President of the Victoria County Arts Council.
Mamie was Mel's Mother & her first fibre arts and conservation teacher.
Mel combines her life-long fibre arts studies & academic studies in biology to explore & teach a vast array of plant-based mordants & dyes, & an ecological stewardship approach to all fibre arts.
Mamie (centre) with her siblings on their Wetaskiwin, Alberta area farm. The girls are wearing home-made dresses crafted from flour and feed sacks during The Great Depression.
“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the Earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.”
Set amidst the rugged highlands and spectacular coastline of Cape Breton Island, Mamie’s Schoolhouse is for teachers and students who share a desire to tread as lightly as possible on the Earth while celebrating the ingenuity and beauty of natural and up-cycled fibre creations of every kind.
