The Heart of CRAFTED

The community comes together to celebrate handmade items in a beautiful art-filled space. Just in time for the holidays, visitors shop direct from knowledgeable makers in a warm and welcoming setting. 

CRAFTED 2023 is our biggest ever, with over 100 artists taking over all four levels of the Gallery and CRAFTED: A Fashion Show featuring over 20 designers from Manitoba, Nunavut, Nunatsiavut, and the Northwest Territories. This year, the event is made possible by partnerships with Manitoba Craft Council, Northwest Territories Arts, Nunavut Development Corporation, Avataq Cultural Institute, and the Nunatsiavut Government.

Philanthropy has always been at the heart of CRAFTED. Over the years, we’ve invited the community to make mittens, scarves, and quilts, invest in cookbooks highlighting local ceramic artists and chefs, purchase beading kits and gather to share stories and skills – all in support of people and causes that are dear to us. This year, we’re working with Lourdes Still of Masagana Flower Farm & Studio to offer the purchase of a DIY Floral Dye Kit, including supplies and instructions. Net proceeds will be donated to Sunshine House, a Community Drop-in and Resource Centre focusing on social inclusion and harm reduction in Winnipeg. They work to provide programming that fulfills people’s social, community, and recreational needs. 

Masagana Flower Farm & Studio is an experiential seasonal flower farm and natural dye studio in Southeast Manitoba. This woman-led, Filipina-owned small business is all about growing joy and creating magic through flowers that can be used as natural dye sources. Masagana grows seasonal blooms and dye plants that they also use to create hand-dyed textiles. They also offer Tinta – a dye your own wearable art experience class.

We caught up with Lourdes Still, founder of Masagana Flower Farm & Studio to learn more about her business, what inspired her to get involved with CRAFTED, how she got started in the sustainable, slow flower movement, and more, read on for the interview:

WQ: How did Masagana Flower Farm come about?

LS: When I first moved to Canada, I got a job as a flower buyer and worked with a wholesaler. I didn’t think about gardening and I didn’t garden in the Philippines. But my roommate and I loved hosting dinners and started to see farmers markets pop up. We liked knowing where our food and ingredients were coming from, and became interested in the slow food movement, and I began to wonder if there was also a slow flower movement. 

From there, I learned about flower farms in Manitoba and how they’re able to grow in such a short season. I already knew about the logistics of sourcing from my job. Then I met my husband, we lived out of town, and we started to make better use of our lawn, to transform our lawn into a more beneficial way to grow food and offer something more beneficial to pollinators. 

It was all these things coming together that helped form Masagana Flower Farm & Studio in 2018. I went from being a flower buyer to a flower grower, and my interactions with flowers changed too. I anticipated the next season, curious about how I could better interact with the flowers based on what I had learned in the previous season. Masagana is a seasonal flower farm, but we diversify with natural dyes so we can operate all year long.

WQ: What inspired you to get involved with ShopWAG and CRAFTED?

LS: A lot of this transitioning and focusing on flowers happened during the pandemic and I didn’t want to be boxed into what a flower farm can do. My entrepreneurial brain told me to focus on what brings joy – and growing flowers with multiple uses does that for me.

The natural next step for me was to get involved with the Manitoba Craft Council at the end of 2020, who are also partners with WAG-Qaumajuq and ShopWAG for CRAFTED. Natural dyeing is an art and craft, and I began showcasing the naturally dyed products at the Craft Council, and then with ShopWAG. 

WQ: What does it mean to you to be part of the philanthropic component of CRAFTED this year, with net proceeds from the flower kits being donated to Sunshine House?

LS: It is such an honour. Since I started going to CRAFTED, I always thought it was such an amazing event that not only showcased the work of artists in the community but also gave back to it. This is such a great opportunity to use both my platform and the reach from CRAFTED to highlight the important work of Sunshine House.

WQ: What do you hope people will learn about seasonal and local flowers by purchasing the dye kits?

LS: I hope people begin to re-imagine what to plant in their gardens next year or will be inspired to start one. Flowers can serve us in more than one way, and have more than one purpose. I hope this kit will spark that curiosity.

The climate emergency is so prevalent, it can feel overwhelming to think where to begin trying to mitigate it. But we can focus on what we can do in our own backyard. It’s also a conversation starter, to talk about synthetic colours, natural dyes, fast fashion versus slow fashion. It inspires us to be curious about flower farms in Manitoba, makes us think about how we are sourcing our flowers in the cold months, and how we interact with flowers that we grow. It opens up ideas that flowers can be used in multiple ways.

This is an invitation to let nature lead you and nurture your creative self. Everyone is creative, this is the perfect introduction to play around with your creativity.

You can learn more about the Show + Sale and meet all the artists here. Learn more about the Fashion Show and meet the designers here.