While shopping in the garment district for emergency lining the other day I stumbled across this pile of amazing ikat patterns stacked on the table by the cash register in a fabric shop. The woman who owned the shop pulled out a pile of photographs from behind the desk and told me the fabrics were hand woven by artisans in Uzbekistan, her home country. She was selling them on consignment for no profit (at least that’s what she said) to help the artisans keep the tradition alive. That’s all she had to say to sell me on them!
The fabrics she had were all very narrow width goods, 18″ wide or less, which doesn’t allow for very many options. And it was expensive enough to not want to waste any of it by cutting it into pieces (which I try to avoid anyway). The other problem was that she only had very limited yardage, so I bought as much as I could afford and have resigned myself to accepting the fact that I’ll only be able to make a few pieces in each pattern – yes, I bought multiple patterns! But they’re all so amazing that I couldn’t resist.
As an added bonus, when I brought the patterns home, I realized I had some vintage African fabrics that matched perfectly with my new ikat patterns. The first skirt is ready just in time for the photo shoot next week. I’ll keep the other styles as a surprise for later.
*(you’ll also notice that despite my belief in open source information, I’m not sharing my supplier info for this post… I’m keeping this all to myself until I can buy up the entire supply!)