Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Jaipur day

Feel like taking a nap like this camel, isn't he amazing. This is not my Baba just some guy we saw in Jaipur

 .It is the hot season yet it also seems to be the busy season.....Praveen is maddly making a shed for camel and cow food and a shelter for said camel and cow, so we can finish off the 2 rooms already built for homestay.....and we have decided to go aheaed and open our own workshop for sewing work. We have been sub-contracting machine stitching that we look after for various clients.




We have found that unless we sit on top of it completely the work is not up to standard, then there are endless stories about why it is late and etc, etc, etc.....It gets too much after a while, so we think if we start our own place it will be reliant on our organizational skills, ability to work out timings and co-ordinate projects- can not be any more time consuming than what we already do and a lot more organized- well that is our theory.
so big day yesterday off to Jaipur, first visiting the khadi wallah and crawling through mountains of handloom cotton to find what we wanted for our tablelinen....do you know the kahdi/ handloom movement is sort of a collection of many co-operatives monitered for standards and wages by the government of India and it has 60 lakh memeber groups; a lakh is a hindi number =100,000...so it has 6 million member groups in the organization- it is huge and supplies work to vast amounts of the poorer sectors of society.
I love khadi!! for the ideals at the base of it as well as a wonderful cloth to use.
Then we met up with our friend Hemant in Sanganer
He is a great guy, who is really, I am realising, my blockprint guru....it is his workshop we always take our groups to for Indigo dyeing and he is ever generous with the time and care he takes with us.
[if you are travelling in India and want to take workshops with him email me and I will make the contact for you]
yesterday we visited and asked his advise on sewing machines - he added sewing to the family blockprint operations about 2 years ago...starting with 3 machines, they now have 26 and are producing some beautiful garments etc.
I will bring some of his blockprint with me on my next sales trip to Oz....


a big new step is opening up for us and we are rather excited....we are eenjoying the work with our Stitching Ladies and think our own workshop will develop into a good business for us producing exciting quality garments for our clients....

3 comments:

Ginny Huber said...

It's exciting to read about other people's excitement and projects..and I am enjoying reading about yours since discovering your various sites! Love the camel photos too! All the best in your new and inspiring ventures!

Chris Lines said...

Good stuff, Fiona, you WILL be so busy but maybe it will be easier to control.

Purly Wendy said...

It's all so exciting to hear about Fiona and more beautiful products to delight us! Loved the last lot of goodies I received.