A Day Full of Textiles
This morning we boarded our little bus and went to the National Institute of Design (NID) which is a design school founded by Charles Eames. The nine of us in our group gave short presentations about our work and about that many students presented their work. We all were impressed with one another. I showed my sheer ruffles, veils, bookmarks and the costume that lit up that I wove with fiber optics. I ended with my doll clothes. I took cards with pictures of the sheer pieces and that were snapped up by the students.
Before breakfast a graduate from the school brought his lovely shibori (tie dye) scarves to the hotel sell. We were taken to a popular restaurant, named Swati for lunch. The photos are from there. Several of us noticed a girl wearing a 1940’s bandana scarf and looking very stylish. That brought back memories and a good laugh. After lunch we visited the showroom and workroom of a fashion designer who works with traditional Indian fabrics on which he does exquisite gold embroidery. The red dress is an example of one of the least elaborate designs. Everything was gorgeous. The second fabric is a hand block printed fabric with gold embroidery which was beautiful in another way. I bought a shawl that was only block printed without any embroidery. I love it because the scale of the block prints is small. It was interesting to see the men doing the embroidery in the workshop. It was well lighted and clean and every one was busy, busy punching the needles to do the embroidering. [click first photo to enlarge]
