Recycling old sarees

What better way to feel your mother's warmth than to make a quilt out of her sarees?
My mother is not fond of cotton sarees, like many people she feels that wearing it makes her to look fat. But it is inevitable in coastal Karnataka in hot summers. Old cotton sarees are in great demand in my native village. People there always want old cotton sarees, not to wear them but to sleep in them and mostly to make diapers for the new born babies.
I had couple of my mother's old torn sarees and one of mine. So I thought why not make a quilt out of it.
For this quilt I used three sarees, old duppatta, cotton threads.
Lay down two of the sarees and thoroughly press them so that there are no folds. This also helps in stitching.
Use the less torn one/ good looking one out side. Just put the second saree inside the first one.
Since the saree is too long, I didn't want the whole 5 m+, so I cut it to the required length. In this case I cut out the pallu part.
Use running stich along the width of the sarees to stitch them together. Here you can see a saree inside and outside of which you can see a balck saree with red border.

After stitching the above, I had to give them a border for two reasons.
1. I did n't like the uncomfortable zari border.
2. I wanted extra width to the normal saree width.
For this I had an old dupatta. So I cut it into half, made the two layers of the third saree(exactly of the same lengh and width of the dupatta) and stitched it as a border.

It almost took me a week, to stitch everything by hand.
End result is not perfect but it's warm and cozy...

A lot to read..

Off late I have been travelling to city for my personal work. I always make a point to visit to this book store located opposite to Hot Chips/near to the Jayanagar bus station. This guy sells second hand books and has a good, huge collection of books. The shop also offers membership if you are regular and interested. If you happen to live in south of Bangalore, and book lover like me, do pay a visit.
After couple of visits last month I have a collection of books to read. I love author Alexander McCall Smith's writing and his famous 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' series. I bought a lot of them as it was available there. These would definitely keep me occupied for few days.
A lot to read before I go to sleep -:))

New beginning....

A big HI and HAPPY NEW YEAR to all bloggers and readers.
I been really busy packing, un packing from back to back trip one in the year end and one in the long weekend of Sankranti.
First one was the normal one where we visited our native, second one was the long waited Chennai Trip.
It was wonderful drive down to the sizzling metro Chennai.
If I ask my kids what they liked a lot in the trip they would first say their stay in the HOTEL, MARINA BEACH and lastly CROCODILE BANK. If you ask me what I liked the most, I would definitely tell beautiful old temples and the sarees that I picked -:)

The half of the first day was spent in driving to Chennai, the second half in sight seeing in Chennai which included the visit to San Thome church, Mylapore tank, Kapaleeshwar temple, roaming around the east Mada st.

The second day was for the trip to Mahabalipuram and on the way back a visit to the crocodile bank of Madras. What was exciting was that we decided to drive in the streets of Chennai, thoroughly checking the GPS instructions and asking around. A strange feeling was always in the back of my mind that we would loose our way somewhere and struck in the traffic. But nothing that sort happened.

The third day we wanted to leave back to B'lore ASP but before that we wanted to do a little shopping. So we left for famous T.Nagar of Chennai. Roaming in T.Nagar in the early morning we looked like fools. All you could see was the closed shutters and workers in the shops waiting for the shops to open(may be because it was PONGAL in Tamilnadu).  But luckily even at 9:30AM few famous saree shops had opened. We entered the famous Sri Kumarans and  headed directly to the floor selling Kanchipuram sarees which I am a ardent fan of. The last time I shopped heavvily for Kanchi sarees was during the joint celebration of our Graha Pravesha and my brothers wedding. But back then the sarees was a bit cheaper.
I was so tempted seeing woven beauties one after the other, I finally settled for 4. My H had a big hole in the Credit card. But after buying them, marvelling them, I slowly wonder where will I ever where them? Aren't they beautiful?..

My garden December 2012

New blooms of Bougainvillea, lavender and the oranges. Only problem with them is pruning. Every time I prune it I have scratches over my hand.

Sorry state of our lawn.
Our lawn is usually infested by termites and we apply chemical fertilizer to minimize the infestation. So far we have applied thrice in two years but this time we decided to tackle in organic way. So my husband applied urea directly on to them. I have told thousand times not to do this but he has done this couple of times and killed few plants here and there. Later he applied neem powder to them. As a results we have even badder looking grass, never ever follow this.

Rapidly spreading Thunbergia blue creeper. They are every where in our front garden and have taken the Bougainvillea plants for the support.

Umbrella plant growing tall against the windows.

Dwarf variegated umbrella plant and the dark pink rose. I tried to propagate the variegated umbrella plant, but I wasn't successful.

Roses are very hungry plants and always in need of nourishment, otherwise they fail to bloom. One of the thumb rule you should follow for roses are pruning and fertilizing. Luckily I stay in the outskirts of the city so I have access to the cow dung manure. Every month I mix the fresh cowdung with less than equal proportion of neem powder, dilute the mixture with water and apply to the plants.

Lastly my pomegranate which has so far given us around 10 fruits tasting good.

Hope you enjoyed my garden!

Last week...

Hope you all had super Diwali blast. Whenever I think of Diwali, eating sweets, crackers and cleaning comes into my mind. We all do cleaning everyday but for the festival Diwali it's even more. We got live in Gujarat for about 3 years and I got this habit of cleaning home for Deepavali from Gujaratis. It's is believed that Goddess Lakshmi resides only in clean home.

Sharing here with you is our children's room.
Currently this room is occupied to the fullest by the elder son Pranav. The younger one Prajwal is yet to establish his foot here and his domain is the living room and the dining hall.
I have a special cleaning session of this room on Monday morning after two days of masti by the boys. You can't imagine state of this room at the end of the week -:)
We tried a lot making Pranav to clean his room(especially his table) by bribing, threatening etc., but it works only temporarily.

Before

After...

Cloth basket

There are lot of cotton sarees my in-law, mother gave for making cloth nappies for my toddler sons years ago. Most them were unused, so I decided to make better use of it and made a basket out of it. They aren't sturdy for sure but all they can do is hold things together.

It has been months since I started this project and dropped in between. It was just like few things that I fail to continue due to lack of motivation. So it was tucked away in the wardrobe for many months. Last week when I was cleaning the wardrobe I found my half finished project. I felt like continuing it. I started working on it with full force and hardly took 3-4 hrs to complete it.  

To make it sturdy I took my old unused  crossstich  base and stitched the cloth plaits back to back.

After finishing it, there was a heavy demand from both my sons. The elder one wanted it to hold his Cricket Attack cards and the younger one to hold his small toy cars. I know I should make more to satisfy their demands...

Tips.... about chikkoo

Image via Fruitpedia

Sapota or chikkoo as we call them is one of my favorite fruit. But unfortunately whenever I bring them home, it's more thrown than eaten. If I get the ripe ones, I cannot consume them all at once, the next day they would have the sour taste. Once I asked the shopkeeper how do I make the raw ones ripe at home. He suggested me to put them in the rice dabba/box and close its lid. But again they would be ripe but would have a undesired wrinkled skin. Therefore most of the time I just avoid buying sapotas even though they are tempting.

But recently I thought to give it another try. I put them in a polythene bag and then put this bag in the rice box. Ha, ha this trick of mine worked. 

So guys if you are sapota lovers like me, all you have to do is put the raw, grown sapotas in a polythene bag, tie it and put them in the rice box with a closing lid and you get to taste the juicy sapotas in the end...