I can’t remember how and when I came across with Sari Bari but since then I really liked what they do. They recycle old sari and rescue women in India.
When I saw they are looking for donations of quilts for fundraising auction, I signed up. The mission was to make a quilt with recycled sari. Well interesting challenge I thought.
And a bag of sari arrived. Some are huge prints, some are very worn out and some are bit stained. All were still holding nice waxy smell.
It took me a long time to get enough encouragement to start because I knew these fabrics don’t behave anything like quilting cotton. It would drive me mad if I tried to rotary cut because straight lines won’t stay straight even for a second. The reason is they are all made with really fine yarn and loosely woven. So, instead of rotary cutting I just ripped which will happen along on the grain more or less.
Yes I could use some stabiliser but that will lose nice soft texture which I didn’t want to happen at all.
In order to mix up large prints, I chose improv piecing for this quilt and I worked mainly purple and green fabric within the given ones.
All straight ripped fabrics were stitched as straight as possible. I didn’t trim excess fabric in order to avoid pieced parts to become smaller and they were just folded over.
It didn’t end up in a bad shape. The top was well over two meters on all sides which I measured against my body very roughly.
2 Comments
4o shades of green.
Hi Tomomi, I am also making a Sari Bari quilt. Would you consider exhibiting your quilt along side mine at the River of Dreams quilt exhibition and we could tell the Sari Bari’s story.
Regards
Amanda
Tomomi
Hi Amanda, yes that will be interesting!