DIY : Fun with scraps.

A brand new -closet to decor- DIY project for old faded garments  to start the year...!

Five old - really old garments, one fine day in a stroke of inspiration... (Remember this ?) go under the scissors. And the resultant is a shabby and unevenly sewn yet  fun coverlet for the master bed!


I have a thing for not throwing away stuff.  So a few old kurtas and  table cloths which were  completely exhausted  but loved all the same  -for one reason or the other,  get reinvented  over one weekend.  Since I am no expert with the sewing machine,  it helped that the project did not require one to be perfect.

The Recyclables:

Old kurtas table cloths and an old curtain..

The garments were chosen based on a broad color scheme I wanted to follow for the bed-spread. They were then dismembered into same sized squares and put together  strip by strip until we finally have a Indian block print meets  Chinese and Japanese vegetable dyed batik meets pin-tuck story..!

Here is the shabby chic boho inspired results.. You like?!

Although not pictured here, the sheet has been backed with a plain navy blue casement fabric from an old curtain .

While cutting the squares and assembling the scraps  here are the few things I tried to keep in mind:

~  Cut equal sized squares form all over the garment, sleeves and interface included.

~ Join scraps of similar colored/ patterned fabric from the trims to extract the maximum use out of  the garments.

~ retain the full motif of large prints without wasting fabric to the extent possible.

~ Try not to repeat the same fabric twice in a row .

~ go over each row twice with the machine or better still interlock if you can ( I do not have the interlocking feature on my machine )

~ try to be neat. ( even with all the striving to be neat, the result is uneven in this case, but focus while working helped!)

I had a great time putting this one together.  You like ? !! Do share simple ideas of your own  to recycle and reuse old things...

Designer Diwali!!

I am in the mood for color. Lots of color.   Fuchsia, orange and turquoise, that's how much color.  Throw in sheeny shiny mirrors and a dose of vintage fashion and the festive is already added to the festive season!
Only this time it comes with a twist. It is among the first of what I am hoping will become designer collaborations.  How to up cycle an old garment you cannot bear to throw away?

Kanika Bhal of Anek designs shows me how ... 

Spring cleaning a while back I came across this funky kurti I was very proud to posses a few years back. Now a bit frayed and a little weathered it has been in retirement for sometime. Only  I could not get myself to give it away.

Looking for ideas to do something with the garment, I  thought of Kanika. A textile designer and entrepreneur who's work I have been in love with since I first saw her inventive work with traditional textiles.

A phone call, a quick trek to her cute little design studio in Andheri, Mumbai  and restless wait!
Until just a few days back, right in time for Diwali,  I receive this package of a kurti transformed as if by magic..

Then snazzy ethnic top ...

Now, fun funky accent pillows!!

The garment has come a long way indeed.

Five pillows, one batua and it does not end here! I have been kept waiting for a surprise which is till in the making ! How much fun can one sqeeze out of a single garment ?

Kanika explains her choices of color and detail, " I picked Rani ( it should be the Indian national colour) as the main colour and added orange and teal to compliment. Rani was present in the original printed kurti as well, so I just picked up on it. I used my signature potlis along with traditional Gujarati triangular trims 

to add detail and an element of fun. I made the cushions in assorted sizes so that they can be used in various settings."

And  here are three ways of glamming up a corner of the house, vintage fashion style then:

Against a neutral crisp white..

Cool boho turquoise love...

  Warm and punchy festive splash..!

The limitless goodness does not stop here. There is also a delightful little pouch made from left over fabric. Set against the warrior princess tray from another powerhouse of talent, Vineeta Nair it makes quite a picture. Non?!

Here are Kanika's  tips  to use when taking on a project like this :

When working with old textiles:

Be sure that the base fabric still has some strength left, else it will tear soon. 

stitch reinforcements may have to be added.

The pieces must be dry clean/ spot clean only to make them last longer.

Its a great way to recycle your favourite pieces so go ahead and raid your closet now!

So there, the hoarder in me is punch drunk at the moment. Do check out Kanika's incredible work  here. Still to come on the blog, a home tour and a  morning spent at Anek design's studio. Until then, please leave your comments and stay with me!!!

Workshop at Anokhi museum

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

American poet novelist and social activist Marge Piercy says so  while writer philosopher and Robert M Pirsig  dedicates  a whole book to it. The virtue of using your hands. A case for respecting physical labour  has been made again again in the context of hyper mechanised time such as ours.
Deeper psychological motivations for creating  and submitting ones senses to materials and manual processes aside, I am always one for using my hands. Provided  it is not too complex, there is plenty of help at hand and nobody is judging the misadventures that usually result in trying some thing entirely new!
Motorcycle maintenance unfortunately does not qualify for me then.  But with a little help from the experts,  block printing my  own piece of fabric should not be as hard? I had pre booked an appointment at the Anokhi Museum workshop days in advance. Imagine being able to engage with materials and processes of an age old craft in the sunlit environs of a 14th century Rajasthani haveli?. Quite naturally I was excited !

Only when  in that sun dappled heaven two and a half meters of cotton mul fabric was stretched neatly onto a padded work table ahead of me did it strike. A familiar fear of blank white space ! It was going to be a long day of  effort and learning an entirely new thing.
Luckily for me, the  workshop has an unsmiling, but extremely competent and helpful master printer ready to assist  me through the afternoon's work.

Muhammed Iqbal, the no-nonsense lord of the workshop calmly drew a tray of blocks  and laid them on the table. '' You can choose a simple one or two-block pattern or make something  more intricate with more colours," he suggested.   

Having waited to try my hand at block printing  for this long, I was under tremendous pressure to create a masterwork instantly. So  no  one colour and two block set for me as I reached for a full four block pattern.  (Although I  really wanted to  see  some of my favourite Anokhi blocks,  the  Poppy flower or Imperial peony designs, none of the two were available at that time)  Rummaging through  the pile, a little too assiduously in the hope of getting my nerves together, I  arrived at a lotus Jaal pattern finally.

Iqbal, a skilled craftsman who has been in the trade since he was  a tiny 8-years-old,  walked me through the preliminaries,  cutting down all drama instantly: what to print? How many blocks and how many colours?
Prep in place, began the arduous but utterly engrossing actual printing process.





The number of printing blocks needed in a design often depends  on the number of colours desired.   To begin with the  background of the  fabric is printed onto the fabric with the help of the   Gudh  or the background block. I chose a dull  moss green colour for the same.  The  block needs to be  dabbed on the dye tray in one deft motion,  so that the right amount of pigment adheres to the pattern.  The printer then aligns it on the fabric and discharges the dye from the block with a sharp tap on  the back of the block. Care needs to be taken to match the design of the  first block so that the design falls into place for the entire length . If this sounds simple, I must add it took me a good amount  of concentration and effort to get it just about right.




Soon the workshop  filled up  with the sweet thump thump of blocks hitting the padded table. A kind of musical,  set of thumps  that transport one instantly into an absorbed, focused state. An hour into the deal - right upto the time a cup of tea materialised like a miracle, I had all but  lost myself to  the rhythmic, repetitive motions. The deep state of peace achieved actually had very little bearing on the number of mistakes I was inadvertently yet continuously making! Mercifully  Iqbal generously and deftly kept correcting after me all the time making light of my mounting sense of inadequacy . " Wait till we finish," he kept saying and I very wisely decided to take his advice.
Once the Gudh is successfully executed, the Rekh or the outline block needs to be applied. This stage  gives definition to the design and requires a lot of precision.   I watched the demo attentively. But no amount of attention can make up for the lack of experience.  In spite of my valiant efforts I continued to  go horribly off the mark in a number of places.

Barely half way through my arms throbbing with the effort and  outlines already a mess, I felt a   tremendous respect for the people who actually do this for a living. For the commercial patterns can demand way more than just four blocks. Iqbal told me of something he had printed with ten blocks!  Only before I could start ruing the decision to undertake just the four block design, he promised that the next two blocks were not going to be all that hard.  And he was right!
The remaining two blocks  Called Datta, are  essentially those that fill in colour in the outlined design. I choose bright blue and red pigments.  The design begins to emerge with each colour applied.  The final, red coloured lotus petal blocks being the crowning glory of all exertions of the day !




The day done, I chose to feel exhilarated in spite of the tiredness. The plain white fabric had been transformed  with colour and pattern. As for the imperfections and mess, I decided to love them all; after all if  there is going to be just this afternoon of printing and just these two meters of cotton mul I will take back home.  Until another such afternoon and another length of fabric that is!

Note : 
Rajasthan has been an important centre of hand printing since the 12 century.  Where at the workshop we get to work with carved wooden blocks, numerous techniques of hand printing and dyeing have been popular  in areas in and around Jaipur. Traditionally  the block prints of Jaipur  and its surrounding  villages were known not just for their quality  of printing but also for their use of natural dyes. The advent of commercial screen printing in the early  1960's bought with it new chemical colouration processes', which block printers were  fast to adapt  to their own printing styles. 
It is also possible to participate in a block carving workshop  at the museum by appointment.
For details about the workshop, timings, booking etc visit the museum website here :  Anokhi Museum of Hand Printing.

DIY: Calendar art inspired Wall : Part 2

Continuing the living with calendar art story, here are two other niches.

These smaller ones are painted in contrasting parrot green and citron orange colours.  Although calendar art remained an inspiration in doing these two also, the theme is distinct from the first larger niche (story here)- in that, broad elements of a typical calendar have been used on blank backgrounds as opposed to a dense montage of images culled from calendars.

For the first of these niches, I started with a base of aged mirror for a bright reflective surface. My  local glass vendor cut a chor bazar buy  into neat squares, which we pasted onto ply with silicone.

A few touches of paint in different colours, a  few popular motifs  that recur in calendars ( the garland bearing elephant, the Devanagari letters reading `Shubh',  lotuses and a  decorative landscape), successive layers of modge podge and viola,  we had the niche! 

I sanded down areas  that I wanted to reflect more between layers of the sealant, although it is perfectly possible to have a glossy mirror surface.

The second one, was going to house an old brass Ganpati, a gift from my grandmother. Hence the choice of a color that contrasts well with the colour of the Ganpati. Here I just magnified a single motif- the lotus,  and printed it in varying sizes.  Colouring in with water colour pencils and acrylic colours to defined the blooms :

I wish I had a better picture, but the entire wall is just too wide even for my widest lense.  But if helps give a sense, here is the whole deal :

DIY : Calendar art inspired wall.

A good part of what I, like  countless Indians growing up in the 70s and 80s small town India know about art, culture and religion comes straight from a bright, kitschy calendar, or bazar print : the colour saturated, mass produced representation of deities, religious themes alongside chubby babies, freedom fighters, movie stars and romantic and idyllic landscapes.  These  psychedelic prints of benevolent Gods and Goddesses smiling down their blessings  on to living rooms, shop floors and street corners have  fired popular imagination and visual culture in the subcontinent for over a century .

Much of how we imagine our deities as, is coloured by years of  exposure to the generously proportioned Gods and Goddesses rendered in rich jewel tones in one too many calendars. I have always wanted to hang a few at home.  The problem with wanting to frame calendar art is that there is way too many attractive, fascinating and confusing options to choose from!

So while scouring the local flea market for appropriate prints ( as in, those that evoked memories of  other calendars in other homes )  I landed up coming back with a stash!  With some amount of thought, all of the 11 crumbling and yellowing  prints I found, landed up in a single niche right at the entrance of the house. 

Although the prints were mostly whole they had aged considerably, making  the paper very amenable to being decoupaged. So decoupaged they are, embellished with sequins paints and mirrors. Have two other niches to go. Will come back with them later. Until then, hope you enjoy these. 

It all begins with a single niche  hand drawn in the shape of a Jharokha and cut out along with two others near the entrance.

Cutting, priming, texturing  the wall and painting the Jharokha.

Croping and cutting from Calendars, pasting selected images  on a piece of ply cut in the shape of the Jharokha.

Detailing 

 Going over the pasted images with layers of any good quality sealant . I used modge podge. It is a good idea to allow the surface to dry out completely between applications.

Finally, getting Hem Singh to secure the finished  ply onto the wall :)

Featured : Hindustan Times Mint

Part of a blogger feature carried by Live Mint this past weekend... Ways to use and display old textiles bags.  I convert a few into cushions, putting them to use when I am not using them as bags.

Mirror worked, appliquéd, hand dyed,  traditional cloth bags are a ubiquitous fashion and practical accessory from every where.  Most of us  have a few lying about the house. Sometimes even the textile shopping bags one gets at cotton clothing stores these days are so hard to ignore !  (Anokhi, Fab India and Cotton's Jaipur dole out lovely eco-friendly , reusable, fabric shopping bags).. Here is a way to  use  them all - heirloom, high street or plain free.

Above: appliqued indigo dyded bag from Vietnam gets used as a head rest stuffed with old Tshirts and random scraps. The roughly put together stitches can be ripped open in a second, when one feels like putting the same to another  use, like as a  real bag perhaps?!

An old shopping bag from Cottons Jaipur, stuffed with a filler and embellished with pom poms and ghungroos..

An old  beauty from Kutch that used to be my Go to bag while in college,  used as a cushion somedays :)

The whole ensemble of cushions and textiles displayed in different  corners of the house. A casual seating area  in the living room in the above instance.
Hand made things are usually easy to throw together, as  even drastically different styles tend to work well together.   It is a good idea to balance the  scheme by combining solid coloured textiles with patterned textiles. Usually using different patterns used creating  different techniques- weave, embroidery, and prints  helps create a rich and attractive end result.

A big thank you to Komal Sharma from Mint for the feature :) ..Its particularly exciting to share the same space as Bhavna (of An Indian Summer) and Rajee (of  Rajeesood )  

Diwali

Colour and lots of hand made fun this diwali

Quick post about Diwali prep at home. This year, we have tried to reuse things we have at home,  add more colour and have loads of fun  in anticipation of the day!

The kids having a go at painting the diyas, which are soaked, washed and primed with offwhite paint first.

For many years now, I have refused to throw my used earthen diyas away. Just so long as they  are not chipped and cracked, we wash dry and repaint them using bio-safe acrylics giving them a new lease of life.

This year, we are making story- stools to prop the Diyas on too. All manner of old chowkis and peedhas,  have been sanded down and painted in vibrant colours. Some featuring motifs and scenes from my kids favourite traditional Indian stories.

Painted and finished..together with a bunch of yellow and orange foot stools  to house them on.

The stools make bright little spots- ideal to brighten up the house for Diwali. These will get used in the house easily later, as tiny study desks,  table top accents, to store books and ofcourse just normal stools to sit on. 

Since they  can be painted over easily, the activity allows for maximum fun..something my kids too have had a liberal hand in. Unabashedly playing with paint, leaving the finer details from me to tweak later  ;).

The Bull from heaven.

The stool pictured above is based on a lively  Buddhist story chosen by my son.

 A word about the illustration: I  have based the drawing in good part on a drawing by illustrator Linda Edwards, from a children's book called ~Stories from India~ published by Usborne. 

Hope to comeback with yet another Diwali post, provided I can make the time to tend to the blog while so much is going on around.

Have a good one folks !

DIY: Recycled Bookbox

 Idle Sunday afternoon.

four pair of hands, 

One discarded wooden crate

paints- brushes

varnish

=

Recycled book case.

This one here based on Mumbai  is inspired by truck graphics and wall art.

Before and underway

The finished book box

Whew!
Hope you  guys enjoy this..
We did !!