Kawandi Siddi Cloth Workshop

 

This morning I took a great workshop (on zoom of course) through South Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild with Sujata Shah on hand-stitching a Siddi Kawandi. She was a great instructor, very lively and engaging giving us the background of the Siddi people in India as well as how the Kawandi (which means quilt) are made in the Siddi tradition. Sujata had very clear video instructions along with a lot of great examples of different types of Kawandi. This first picture is of my first corner where I've inserted a folded over twice square to make what's called a fula. The Kawandi is considered naked without a fula in each of the four corners.

This type of quilt is made from the outside into the center, which is very different from the way I'm used to working. I liked how different this process was, You're quilting and piecing and designing as you go. Instead of using heavier-weight quilting cottons, I decided to use my box of random silks, and so far I'm enjoying all the various textures. The silk is very very nice to stitch through by hand. Some of the pieces are from my grandmother's stash or my own from various clothing items I've sewn, so there are good memories embedded in there too.

I always have so much trouble threading my needle for embroidery so I bought a new type of needle threader that is all one piece of metal (Lo-Ran by Dritz) and it worked really well for the big needle and Spagetti Wonderfil thread I was using.

I mostly  didn't have to use pins but I found that the silks were a little slippery on the corners.

A lot of these fabrics are in fact from FabMo. They're already small swatches, so they're working out well for this type of quilting.

This is going to be a fun on-going hand-stitching project for me to be working on for a while. The whole piece isn't too large and it feels do-able. I'm looking forward to getting to do just some rows of stitching instead of the sort of fiddly part of getting the edge sewn down and started. After I've gotten another round or so of fabric pieces added I'll update my progress.

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