Oumaima is a skilled Artisan born in Morocco and lives in Seattle. She divides her time between Morocco and USA, designing and creating woven home textiles, and teaching her weaving technic she learned across the nation.
Her experience growing up between the two cultures, has inspired her signature style. With her background in design and weaving experience, she then founded an interior textile boutique and design studio in 2019.
Through designing and creating unique woven goods, Oumaima has established herself as a skilled textile and weaver artist. She collaborates with her clients to make pieces that marry their aesthetic with her design vision.
Her Story
At her early age, Oumaima used to watch her mother with local female weavers, seating next to each other in a loom and working harmoniously to weave a Moroccan rug. By learning from her mother, Oumaima put a lot of time into weaving and experimenting all kind of ancient technics that have been used for generation.
Growing up up in a Berber environment that value and appreciate these ancient weaving tradition. She then gained great skills and technics in weaving from her tribe and become a master weaver with great craftsmanship skills.
At her young age, she and other local artisans decided to form a local cooperative dedicated to handwoven rugs. This cooperative was established to facilitate the collaboration between traditional Moroccan weavers. Local female who love to hand weave were invited to work closely together, sharing techniques, knowledge, experiences and make some extra income to help their families.
When she left home to pursue her education in the US. She find it little difficult to join a local weaving workshop and keep doing what she loves. Unfortunately, There weren't many weaving workshop and classes around to join as it was back home. She states" I noticed a gap in the weaving industry, I can see the interest for weaving from many people but there weren’t many resources and classes available for the public who want to learn how to weave" she continue " Additionally, I can see that more people are getting tired of industrial products and more People start looking for unique premium quality pieces that tell a real story. At this time when it crosses my mind to teach weaving and share the techniques that I have learned throughout my experiences"
Her weaving classes gained attraction and more people joined and attended her workshop. By mid 2019, Oumaima started participating in local exhibition to show off her art creations and start selling her work on Etsy and through online shops and boutiques around the country.
Her Mission
Oumaima desire was driven by her feeling of responsibility that she had towards her culture in general and her cooperative in particular. She felt responsible for keeping the cooperative she contributed in alive and protect her own community that rely upon it"
Her presence in the us, give her the chance and the opportunity to showcase and feature the art work of her Moroccan cooperative at various local exhibition around the US.
She states “if NO action is taken today, specially during and after the COVID pandemic, these crafts will disappear and the world will lose precious cultural heritage.” she adds that her program aim to “protect and sustain the ancient cultural heritage of the weaving Berber Community of Morocco” by “empowering women — socially and economically — through craft.”
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