India! Part one.

All though I've spent the whole of the last 10 days in one small region, I’ve been hanging out in three versions of India- in terms of development, wealth, and, of course, fabric.















Part One




These pics are from the area around my ancestral village:

Local tea shop


photogenic cows hard at work


fresh coconut from the front yard


eating lunch off of disposable "plates"


closeup of lunch- yum!


taking a picture of kids playing games


leads to full on kid mob


Ok, enough about traveling, and a little about sewing--
India is still a place where most clothing, at least for women, is custom made by tailors- including everything Im wearing in the above pictures. I'll post more about this later...

As a result, there are small tailor shops in every town and village-with the most amazing old sewing machines.

I have an awesome picture that I misplaced of something totally awesome that I found in the next town-- An all-treadle repair shop! In a place that didn’t have power reliably until the last decade, it made sense to stitch without electricity.

Even so, tailoring in south india is a bit of a historical quirk- Interestingly, according to my relatives, garment construction in this part of India has occurred only since British colonization. Before that, both men and women only wore pleated and draped fabric. Six to Nine yards of it, sure, but nothing with seams. When I was very young, there will still a few women around who didn’t wear sari blouses.

Wikipedia confirms this theory----check out all these regional styles!


Stay tuned for the glittering metropolis...