Bringing together the deep purple of the violet, and the light purple of the wisteria, the depth of wine, the subtle laburnums in an asymmetrical patchwork of different geometry, shapes.

Viola!

Handspun handwoven hemp bridges the drape and the pallu. The yellow and ivory white horizontal broad panels form the base, pleats and drape of the sari. The yellow on the Eri silk will carry the fragrance of turmeric for a long time. One can distinctively smell the rawness of this turmeric from Meghalaya hills bordering the Kamrup district of Assam.

This Sari took me a deeper dive into asymmetry of patchwork. Together with my mother and our tailor Gurmel Singh we really enjoyed crafting this Sari and looking forward to see how you all like it.

About Eri silk and natural dyeing:

1) Home reared Eri silkworms make their cocoons. The rearer collects those cocoons and hands them over to the yarn spinner.

2) The yarn spinner boils (degumming), washes, flattens the cocoons into fibre cakes. The fibre cakes are then mounted on a light wood stick to start the hand spinning of this fibre based silk. No charkha, no mechanised equipment, just a gentle dance of hands twisting the yarn while pulling them from their condensed form in the cocoon. A stone weight spindle keeps turning as the spinner keeps twisting the fibre. When sufficient amount of yarn has been spun, it is rolled into hanks and sent to the weaver.

3) Weaving is primarily woman’s domain in Assam, where the traditional throw shuttle looms are mounted between four pillars dug solid into the flat mud ground. Eri silk’s hand spun fibre involves an intricate warping process. This delicately slub yarn is more or less irregular in size leading to a completely manual process of heddle-making and yarn joining. At no point, the weaver can loose their attention for gentleness while weaving this yarn.

If the yarn is dyed first then the woven fabric is ready at this stage. If the fabric is to be dyed directly, then after weaving, fabric is ready to be sent for the next stage that is dyeing.

4) Eri Silk being a protein fibre absorbs most natural dyes. For this sari, we have used turmeric, lac and indigo as main dye sources Once the dye is ready, the fabric is dipped in the vat. Depending upon the number of dips, the shades of dye can vary from lightest to deepest.

Handspun, handwoven, natural dyed Eri silk is now ready.