Eri silk | Home reared | Handspun | woven on throw shuttle & back strap loom | Natural dyed | Patchwork | Narrow shawl

This narrow shawl is double sided. One side is the patchwork of various hues achievable by natural dyeing Eri Silk with indigo, myrobalan, onion peel and turmeric. The other side is hand spun Eri Silk woven on back-strap loom rendering a unique texture. This shawl brings out the contrast of textures that throw shuttle loom and back strap loom textures create when same yarn is woven on these different looms.

Gen Lak is a teacher, a guide, the one who can see and the one who can show. When I begin to see a teacher in every little strip of fabric, they teach me with their unevenness, how imperfection and the apparent “wastefulness” leads to the highest application of a phenomena called “creativity”.

When do I really become a creative human being? In those rare moments of blissful contact with my own innate usefulness when I am able to see nothing as waste. My heart rejoices yet also remembers the fleeting nature of this union.

Hundreds of tiny strips and boxes align themselves to be called out. An animation begins in the recesses of my head. I see each of these pieces meticulously fit themselves into each other. In a stop motion, they move in perfect unison segregating themselves. No calculation, no real maths, no perfect alignments, shapes and sizes. Before they begin to be stitched together, they have already joined themselves in my mind. I see the patchwork clear in my head so many times before it appears in tactile form.

Gurmel, our tailor stitches each patch with keen precision. He becomes Gen Lak with that focussed gaze.

Eri silk (throw shuttle loom) made with Narmohan Das

Patchwork management by Madhu Mittal

Stitching by Gurmel Singh

Tassels by Param, Bathinda
Midtoan.com, the photographer

Designed by Ritika