The model in the photo has really taken to his part. Suits you, Sir! Not all the sewing machines are in fancy establishments like this. Outside, on the pavement, between the darbar cooking curry in a huge metal pot and an electrical repair shop, there’s a man sitting on the sidewalk with his sewing machine. All day long he hems dupattas, long, wide, scarf-like lengths of fabric, which ladies wear with their Indian outfits. The dupatta is a draped across the front of your blouse with the ends flowing behind your back (to prevent glimpses of cleavage), as a shawl if it turns chilly (it does happen, just not often), to cover your head if you’re going to a temple or holy place, or to protect your hairstyle when you’re on the back of your boyfriend’s motorbike. Unless they’re in a sari (which at 6 yards of fabric is a dress and dupatta all rolled into one), a lady’s not dressed without her dupatta. Personally, I can’t see the point of draping a yard and a half of extra fabric over me when it’s 45 degrees outside. Guess that makes me no lady! Anyway, the guy with his sewing machine is busy. He doesn’t even need to stop when the power goes off. His machine is powered by foot.
With all these industrious sewers around me, tailoring entire garments for sums you’d pay to have a broken zip replaced back home, I decided to treat myself. I’d brought a blouse with me I really liked, and wanted to have it remade in silk. I took it to Ramesh, whose sewing machines were hidden away from the front of the shop, so they could have even been some of those new fangled electric ones! Ramesh took my fabric and the shirt I wanted copied and told me to come back in a week.
So more than a week later, because Indians’ sense of time is “flexible”, I returned to the shop. Ramesh had stepped out, so the man who sat behind the counter decided to help me. I don’t know what his official job title was. Every time I’d ever been in the shop I’d never seen him do anything but sit behind the counter. I showed him my invoice, so he could get my blouse. He asked me to describe it. He barely spoke English. Having an invoice, with an invoice number, didn’t mean he knew where to find my new silk shirt. So not exactly a very efficient booking in system. In a pile of clothes behind the counter, I spotted an offcut of my fabric. I showed it to him, and using it he trawled through a pile of plastic bags under the counter to find the garment to match. That scrap of fabric could have been purchased by anyone! Maybe I had bought it, maybe I spotted it for the first time and liked it. He’d have no way of knowing…
But where was my original blouse? I found it at the bottom of a heap of other clothes, presumably other customers’ sample garments. I know my original blouse was only polyester, but it was still pretty. It didn’t really deserve that kind of treatment! I made him go and find the rest of the left over silk. No idea what I’ll do with it, but being silk it was expensive (by local standards at least), and it was mine. I’d paid for it. Eventually Ramesh returned and gathered together everything that belonged to me. I gave him my 500 rupees (£7, $11USD – double the usual price because working with silk takes twice as long) and left.
As a longarm quilter, the whole experience amused me. People bring me things that are precious to them – their quilt tops - to turn into finished quilts. I pin a label to them to identify who the quilt belongs to and hang them in a wardrobe, safe and clean, until I get to work on them. And once I’ve finished the quilting, the top and any extra backing and batting, get placed together in a bag with a copy of the invoice and hung back in the wardrobe until I can return it. I know at all times where the quilts are, and if I dropped dead, Rod would know who to contact to get them back to their rightful owners. It’s a fairly simple system, and I bet most longarmers use similar ones. Unfortunately Ramesh doesn’t use a system anywhere near as complicated as this one. And before we diss him too much, he’s one of the better ones. Heaven help the next lady who can’t spot a scrap of her fabric in the pile in the corner…
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