Day 3: Exploring fabric

By Farhan Ibn Abid & Ashish Kumar (NID, Bengaluru)

Taking inspiration from yesterday’s work, the team Star, Peacock, Aeroplanes & Kites headed for a day, a new journey for exploring things with more of colours, texture and obviously more on clothes. The clothes collected and gathered and were understood thoroughly. Under the guidance of Lokesh Ghai and the fellow volunteers. We learned about clothes and that cotton happens to be the best of their choice and perhaps the best to work. They displayed their works, the Rallis, the beautiful work and the happiness of being the proud owner of their creation. Here again the stories of cotton mills, their journey from Pakistan to India during the time of separation reminded me of their attachments and the gall thoughts of their leaving and accepting that the faces of some shall not be seen again, it was hard and melancholic. Yet the joy of colours, the celebration of playing with those did not fail for an instance. What we had in front of us was scissors, needle, heap of small cloth pieces and the eye to match the colour and texture with one another.

The play and inspiration of the second day squares 1” by 1” 

Works done by the participants (above); work display by the volunteers and understanding (below)

So, the ingredients starts to take a new turn, some new flavours and the obvious taste of Ralli. In the broad daylight the studio suddenly turned into a busy bee centre where the mother bees were busy teaching how to tear, cut, square it, precision, thread and needle relation, the straight stitch, line, flow, speed, pressure, picking up small pieces to build up to a new one. Picking up each colour, joy, surprise, and smiles to create a bigger ocean. 

For most of us as a participant it was our very first time so to do mistake was very much Understanding the overlap and also how it’s going to react on a later phase when folded back, let not the stitch be seen, the depth at which the stitch is taken so that in later phase it does not weave out. Folding the pieces onto triangle and unfolding it to become a perfect square. And so shall goes the stories of needle and threads and motifs.

The most astonishing and exciting part was to see our mother bees sewing and chatting and in couple of minutes the piece of the extraordinaire is done. Whereas we (not all) still figuring out which piece to come first and which one to be stitched later. Spontaneity, calm, simple and smart it was, what they were creating. For us may be because of the education design was too symmetric, too edgy, fear of doing mistake and lack of risk factor. Whereas it was very relaxing. Till date what was done, was just too much of gaining brownie points.

Discussion over the lunch with Lokesh, about what we want to do and carry forward the work. Challenge part 2 was choose your theme. In which many wanted something wearable. But as per suggested and due to time constrain it was fixed to a quilt. Once again the hearts fully charged with we started dreaming more and more on quilts, the theme and colours. But first back to the work zone. (ICIC, NID Paldi).

It was very obvious for the volunteers that it has been their forte, their mark and their genre of expertise, but many of our fellow friends for their first time came out with beautiful patterns and celebration of colours, foreground, background, contrast and yes a new contemporary format of what we might call as designs, where again design happens spontaneously, happily, colours, festive, drama and life. The bees were busy, busy with their stories, busy with their threads. The birds started to sonnet and alarmed the end of the day. So shall the bees, rest for the next day.