ARTISAN RESOURCE
®
ARTISAN RESOURCE
SPOTLIGHT:
Living Blue
Sona Rani Roy, a master artisan for
Living Blue
, comes
from a farmer’s family, but is traditionally skilled in quilting.
Like many rural woman in Bangladesh, she learned the
technique from her mother, who in turn learned from her
mother. Quilting is a skill that has been handed down by
generations for hundreds of years.
When her family isn’t harvesting, Sona creates “white on
white” (WoW) quilts, taking five to six months to patiently
weave the delicate patterns running over about seven
miles of white thread. Producing these works of art have
provided her with the supplementary income needed to
send her children to school and afford three meals a day
for her family.
Sona is one of more than 240 artisans and 2,700 farmers
within the rural and marginalized communities of North
Bengal working with Living Blue, an initiative launched by
CARE Bangladesh in 2008.
Through Living Blue, artisans not only get a fair wage and
ownership of their own businesses, they also have total
control over profits. Product design direction is also left to
the artisans’ creativity and skills. At their Artisan Resource
debut this February, Living Blue will introduce new
home furnishing products, along with their lines of Katha
embroidered quilts, shawls, and home textiles.
To create the rich blue colors in these products, Living Blue
artisans use the traditional shibori tie-dye technique with
natural dye from the boiled leaves of the Indigo plant.
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