Bags and blinds and weaving and costing and warping and teaching and no camera at hand!!

Fantastic sights and sounds in MESH Design Studio yesterday.  Narayan was click clacking away on the broad loom; Syamala and Ashok had meters of thread across the whole huge room as they made up a lovely orange coloured warp; two weavers from The Physically Handicapped Rehabilitation and Training Centre, Maharashtra were sitting on the floor working on new product ideas on their small looms; Govinda, our curtain and window-blind-maker-in-training was measuring cloth and rollers his first set of made to measure blinds for a customer; Hrishi was teaching Sonu how to cost her handmade greeting cards and I was just enjoying it all and cursing that there wasn’t a camera available just at that minute.

 Then we moved on to look at the bags that Ashok developed in Bethany Leprosy Colony.  Some great new designs again and pretty use of colour.  I love this part, when the waiting is over and we have wonderful new things to touch and model and peer inside. Here is a sneak preview; think chesnuts and fern and the sound of early autumn rain on shiny leaves  

Lovely new colours and .....

and more and ........

… much more to follow.

Card holders...a first for Bethany

 

Trying to use the same kind of materials in different ways to create a fresh look is one of the challenges of our designers. Syamala has just finished a small range of bags from Bethany Leprosy Colony to match a colour scheme for Ten Thousand Villages USA for Summer 2011. The tape is ready for two other collections for Fall and Festival 2011 but the sewing will happen later. The colours are wonderful this time and we have a very snazzy ladies laptop bag as well as some really great small purses and visiting card holders.

Our very own laptop bag for women

Now Syamala is in on the train (for 39 hours!) heading towards Vishakhapatnam on the east coast where she will work with some silk embroiderers and another group of paper workers. She is making baby photograph albums for Sweden with embroidered silk covers and handmade paper. Watch out for those.

Hrishi has moved from working out new multiple designs from one warp for Bharat Mata Kusht Ashram weavers to creating wooden products with Ashish Chand from West Bengal and Babu from KRTC Tamil Nadu. I don’t know what they are making just now but I hope it will include some really nice jigsaw puzzles.

The need to get multiple designs from one warp has arisen as we try and bring some new tablecloths into our shops. A 200 meter warp is the most economical way to work but then that might mean 65 large tablecloths all the same colour and pattern which does not work well for retail sales. Hrishi promises me that we shall get a general theme running through each warp but quite different looking cloths. He is working on four warps. Sounds like we shall need a special launch in the shop!

Bethany handwoven tapes get a completely new look