Fabric, fabric and more fabric!

Do you have any idea what 8,000 yards of fabric looks like? Me either, but I am starting to see the picture.

Here I am with 1860 yards of fabric!

On Tuesday, I walked to the taxi stop, to get a taxi. As I turn the corner on our road, to the Mtendere Road, I immediately see four guys all running at me. "Taxi, Madam?" "Taxi, Madam, right here Madam." I usually try to look at their cars, and see that they have matching tires, and that there aren't any major spots resulting from a prior collision. Oh, and I look at the guys, and try to figure out if they are nice or not! We've picked up some doozies here! I take the guy with the best looking car, not great, but better than the other ones parked there. I ask how much to Kamwala and back, they always say 80,000 and I always say "No, not more than 70,000!" "OK, OK Madam, you are right!"

I climb into the car and we're off, dodging mini buses, dead dogs, guys on bikes, little kids walking so close to the edge of the road. Oh and then there are the speed bumps everywhere, not to mention potholes! It is definitely a journey!

I tell the driver on the way, that I am going to buy A LOT of fabric. "OK, Madam, that is good." We arrive in Kamwala and there are just no words to describe shopping in Kamwala. Except, busy, crazy, dirty, dusty and crowded. The shops are tiny, and the stuff is everywhere. I've mainly shopped in the fabric stores in Kamwala, but I have gone in search of a few other things and in some of the other shops. If they are selling anything small, it is all behind glass or something similar to chicken wire. You walk into the center of the store, and in the shape of a U on both sides there are large glass windows or wire enclosures, with all their products displayed behind it. You go up to the center of the U- straight back into the store, and a man sits and yells at boys, to get what ever you ask for. If you should decide to buy it, the man tells you how much and you pay him and they hand your item to you over the counter. Oh, then there are the people selling all manner of wares on the sidewalks and street corners. It is a very interesting place!

We pull up in front of the store where I am going to pick up the fabric I ordered on my last visit. I needed 30 rolls of printed cotton, at least 5 rolls of the same design. I also, needed 32 rolls of solid color fabric to go with the prints. That is a total of 62 - 30 yard rolls of fabric. They had the prints all tied into a large gray bag, and after giving them a list of the solid colors I needed they put them into another large gray bag. After I emptied my bag of millions of kwacha, they carried the two large heavy parcels to the waiting taxi. You should have seen the look on the taxi driver's face. I'm sure he was thinking, why did I want to give her a ride! One of the bags filled the back seat, and the second stuck out of the trunk substantially. They tied it in with all manner of cords, and it was not going to fall out, that was for sure. The driver gets into the car, and looks at me, and says. "That is more than A LOT of fabric!" And we were off, the car was scraping, and making noises like it was over burdened and it was! I just prayed we would get back before anything really broke or we had a flat tire. It sounded bad. Remember the speed bumps, oh yeah, much worse when the car is really loaded down. We pulled up to the Service Center, and I uttered a prayer of thanksgiving, that we had made it. We unloaded the car and the trunk, carrying them in a few rolls at a time. There was no way we could lift the full bags, even with three of us!

On Wednesday morning while the girls went to the House of Moses and did some errands I got started on cutting the 30 yard rolls into 7 yard pieces. Each hot pad that they are making takes 3 - 3" strips of fabric 7 yards long.

Two of the samples of hot pads.

                       From the doorway to the wall is 34' and I need each piece cut at 28' or 7 yards.  I am so thankful that the room is this big.  It makes rolling it out and measuring so much easier!  PTL!

End of day two of cutting and folding!

It didn’t take me long to realize that there is no quality control where this fabric is produced. Some of the rolls, changed prints right in the middle of the roll, some were really similar and some weren’t even close. Oh and then there were the stains that were in the roll, and spots of oil from the machines, the spots where there is no color, and in some rolls just a hole here and a hole there. Crazy!

At any point in a 30 yard roll, a totally different pattern would appear.

Sometimes, two or three per roll!  Sometimes really close to the first pattern,

sometimes not even the same colors or anything close????

Do these match?

This one went from green to blue and back to green again!

Or the fact that I asked for 12 rolls of yellow, would they all

be the same shade of yellow?  Apparently not!

I began again the first thing Thursday morning. I finished the cutting by about 12:30! Then I needed to organize the colors, and get three coordinating fabrics together for each set of hot pads. That took a couple of more hours. When I was finished I had put on some serious miles, just walking back and forth across the room, rolling out fabric and cutting it, then folding it and starting again! Oh, and then there was my back, I was bending and using muscles that hadn't been challenged like that for a long time if ever! And they were all screaming at me!

That is over 2,000 yards of the 2,760 yards that I've cut!

I am rejoicing!

 Until I remember I have 5,240 yards to go!

The small rolls are the 2 yards leftover on each roll that will

need to be sewn together to make 7 yard pieces.

Another BIG project!

The part of this program that is going to surprise me, even though I am already contemplating it, is how fast this amount of fabric is going to disappear once the ladies arrive on Friday to collect it!