Fabric purchases

It isn't a lot because I held off and didn't go overboard, but here it is.

This is the spun silk. I wanted the colours to be coordinated which took a lot of discussion. I also wanted it to be super bright because I felt that is reflective of India. We love bright colours. We don't know the term 'muted'. I got a meter a piece, which is a smidgen over a yard (1 1/8th). This was the same fabric my sister purchased for her napkins, so I get additional colours in about a half a yard.

These were impulse buys. I just liked the colours. The blue is actually more purple in person and the red has an orange cast to it. The gray is wonderful. That is my favourite out of the lot. I guess the gray contradicts my earlier statement about muted colours. It is absolutely gorgeous. I got two meters each of this. No idea what I am going to use it for. My sister suggested an Americana quilt for the blue and red.

This was another impulse buy. I bought the end of the bolt. I got 1 1/4 meter for the price of 1 meter. It is zari fabric. Zari is usually on the borders of saris and can be gold and silver. The value of the sari goes by depending on the amount of zari and the material used. This is just some form of synthetic zari. Gold on a cream background. They had other colours for the background, but they were a bit too ostentatious. I didn't know it at the time, but it goes perfectly with the gray.

Oh, I forgot to take a picture of my sari. Oh well. I got a navy blue sari. It is pretty. I am going to cut it up.

Quilting folk like colour, right?

There is a completely legitimate reason why I don't have pictures of my fabric. I can't find my camera. It is somewhere. I had it when I downloaded my trip pictures and that was within the week, so it couldn't have gone that far. Anyway, I do have trip pictures to share, so I am going to do that.

One of the days of our week long trip, my family and I went to the village. Friends of ours do medical mission work about a 3 hour drive from the city. It was a really fun trip.

Tangent- If you haven't heard of the Des Moines Modern Quilt Guild, I suggest you become familiar. It started meeting last spring/summer and it is a great group of very creative people. We meet every 3rd Thursday of the month. At the meetings there is a tip section, a speaker, show and tell and most important of all snacks! If you are anywhere in the Des Moines area I suggest you check it out. Some people drive all the way from Waterloo and Cedar Rapids area. It is just that good! Anyway, I am speaking at the March meeting on March 15th. My topic "Traditional Indian Design in Modern Quilting". Since I am speaking, I am holding off on some of my pictures from the village trip.

My sister wanted my niece to get glass bangles. We used to have glass bangles grouping up that we played with. We never actually wore them, but they were part of our display when we played shop. We couldn't find them in the city, but on the drive I kept an eye out. Sure enough, in one of the small villages on the way I saw a tiny shop with glass bangles. We had my dad pull off quickly and my mum, niece and I hopped out. I think my niece was a little overwhelmed. There were bangles on display, but there were tons of boxes in the back as well. My mum told her she could pick three sets. I was kind of glad because we could have been there a long time otherwise. I got to weigh in with my choices, which she politely ignored. In the last picture in the lower right hand corner you can see the picks. A limey green that I did not care for, a bright blue and a multicoloured set. She had to try on the bangles to make sure they fit and I had to show her how to hold her hand to make sure they went on. It was a very fun way to create a niece- aunt, grandmother-granddaughter memory. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Fabric store trip

I just realized I didn't take any pictures, but there are some in a previous post. I traveled to India with my sister and two of her kids. We arrived on Friday around 9:30 at night and we were at the fabric store at 11 o'clock the next morning. We went back there three times! I don't have pictures, but I will try to describe the shop.

Madhar Sha is a well known fabric store in Madras (Chennai). It has been around for almost seventy-five years. OK, I just checked and the shopping bag says since 1938. There are four floors and each floor is specific to a fabric or fabric use. The basement is filled with cotton solids and silk blends used mostly for choli sari blouses. The first floor is the men's department with all sorts of fabric for shirts, pants and suits. School uniform fabric is also on this floor. The second floor are saris of every kind imaginable- silk, cotton, polyester, beaded, embroidered, plain. The third floor has something on it, but we didn't make it up there. I think furnishings maybe?

There are thousands of bolts in the store. The pictures in the previous post shows that. As a customer you don't get to touch the bolts. They are behind a counter and there is someone to help you for every department. You request the bolt you want to see and they will hand it to you. While that may seem restrictive, it really isn't because the men are very, very helpful and have a lot of experience and knowledge.  Oh, that's an interesting thing- there really aren't any female sales staff. Most of the time, people are looking for a colour match, so they hand over the fabric swatch or sari that needs to be matched and the man behind the counter picks several colours for you to decide from. If that is what you want, they will cut your required amount. It then gets moved in a pile by the checkout and when you are done with all your choices you find your pile. No waiting at a cut counter because it is cut immediately after you decide that is what you want.

I wanted silk, but real silk can be pricey. I went with spun silk which uses the cocoon 'leftovers' and the broken cocoons. The poor man behind the counter was sick of us because we would say "Can we see the blue?", he would point to one blue and we would say, "No, the next one. The next one. No, one more", to get to the one we wanted. My niece enjoyed weighing in on my choices and she was a good little colour consultant. I didn't go crazy buying. I made a conscious decision to get only what I could use. It is very easy to get carried away and I didn't want to be greedy.  Well, my sister got it in her head that she could use the fabric to make table linens, specifically napkins. She wanted them to be 20 inch square. Fabric is sold in meters in India so 20 inch squares with seam allowance is a little over half a meter. She had to buy a full meter. Very unfortunate for her but wonderful for me. I told her I would take take her scraps. My mum was a little suspicious of my math, but 20 inches= 51 cm. My sister wanted a set of 12 (varied colours) so I made out like a bandit! There is some overlap between her choices and mine, but I added about a half dozen colours. She drove the poor man more crazy than I did. Everything gets drug out when my sister is involved. Since we were there on a Saturday morning, it was busy filled with women shopping with their saris looking for matching fabrics, but he was very patient with us.

We went back another day because we were looking for a silk sari as a gift. We went through several different types before we decided on a Kancheepuram silk. That was a very enjoyable experience. I got so carried away with picking it out, I went back for the third time and got a cotton sari for myself.

I apologize for the very wordy post and lack of pictures. My words can't do justice to the experience, but I hope it shares a bit on how things work on the other side of the world. Pictures of the purchases in a later post. I'm still running only at half speed.

Trip

I went to India. I bought fabric. I will share stories when I am not jet-lagged. I apologize for this message not making much sense, but now you know what a delirious person's blog looks like.