One Sunday a month the studio in Guéliz becomes Creative Sunday - a long table, a pot of mint tea, and a few unhurried hours beside the women who make our bags. Phones go in the basket by the door; hands go to the fibre. Watch a basket take shape, try your first row of crochet, feel the difference between raffia and banana leaf. No screen between you and the work - only the stitch, the tea, and good company.
Why we open the door
My family has worked the same Guéliz street for three generations, right beside my father's Rôtisserie de la Paix - chickens turning on the spit one door down, raffia turning into bags on ours. A street like that was never going to hold a closed room. Creative Sunday is how I keep the door honest. For one afternoon the atelier is not a place pieces leave from; it is a place you arrive at. You sit where Fatima sits. You watch the tension travel through her fingers, the way a stitch is undone without fuss and begun again. That patience is the whole of what we make - and it is felt, not read.
A table, not a counter
On Creative Sunday there is no counter, only the table. We pour the tea high and sweet, spread the raffia out in Hot Red, Deep Violet and Camel, and let the talk drift between the women working and the visitors leaning in to look. Travellers passing through Marrakech, neighbours we have greeted for years, sisters who found us online and finally walked in - by the second cup they all have the same fibre between their fingers. Nobody performs here. The room does the talking, and the table does the rest.
What you make with us
No one finishes a basket bag in an afternoon. One bag is roughly 48 hours of work spread across about six days, and we would never let you believe otherwise - that honesty is part of the gift. What you can do is learn where it begins. Fatima will set you on a fruit charm, the same stitch she crochets for the shop: a lemon slice is about two hours of her hands, a whole fruit closer to five, a small bunch of grapes up to six. You leave with a few real rows that are yours - and with a different kind of looking at every row that comes after.
The afternoon, hour by hour
We begin slowly - tea first, always, then the materials. The women pass them around so you can feel for yourself why raffia, doum and banana leaf each behave differently in the hand, and why a Jawhara - the eastern silk-and-poly striped textile we cut for resort pieces - falls and drapes the way it does. Then the hands go to work. Some stay for a single stitch and the conversation around it; others give the whole golden hour to one fruit charm and look up surprised that the light has changed. Both are exactly the right way to spend a Sunday.
Who sits at the table
The atelier is run entirely by women, and Creative Sunday simply widens that circle for an afternoon - curious minds and colourful souls, all welcome. There is a particular joy in watching someone who has carried a YZA bag for a year finally meet the hands that made it. And another in the traveller who came in for the photographs and stayed for the stitch. Sit once and you tend to come back. Worn, shared, loved is not a line we dreamed up - it is just what keeps happening around this table.
Come and make something
Carry a piece of Marrakech. Find the piece from this story just below, or come to us at 66 rue Yougoslavie - open noon to eight, closed Tuesdays - and learn the stitch from the women who have always known it. Leave the phone in the basket; take the afternoon. Rooted in Marrakech, crafted for everywhere. ⵣ
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FAQ
One Sunday a month, at the studio on rue Yougoslavie in Guéliz, beside my father's Rôtisserie de la Paix. We keep regular hours otherwise - noon to eight, closed Tuesdays - so write to us first and we will tell you the next date and save you a seat at the table.
Both, gladly. The table belongs to whoever pulls up a chair - neighbours we have greeted for years and travellers who found us only this morning, shoulder to shoulder with the same raffia in their hands. Curious minds and colourful souls, all welcome.
None at all - bring only your hands and a little patience. Fatima starts everyone on a simple fruit charm - a lemon slice is about two hours of careful work - and shows you the stitch row by row, undoing and trying again until it sits right. You leave with a few rows made by your own hands, and a softer eye for the ones that follow.
