A Journey Towards Realization of A Dream
Today I want to share some details of my past 6 months journey... as many of you already know, the restless me took a refuge in crocheting while traveling since October. In these trials and errors I learnt to make some of my favourite flowers, and then one day I made and shared here on social media night jasmine, which was my Ammi's favourite flower. She wore then in her silver wire hoops. In fact she loved wearing any flower she could including the China Rose in her hair or ears. One day I saw Ammi in my dream with these earings that I had crocheted. She was telling someone, " My Ilmana has made them." Ofcourse it was a figment of my imagination. But I woke up crying with joy.
It is Ammi who taught me all the crafts like crochet, tatting and embroidery. So that day I decided I am going to honor her with a series of some classy and some jazzy floral earings in her name. Ever since then I began crocheting flowers and quietly putting them in a box to be used later.
Once back in Canada in Feb, I embellished them with beads, etc.
One day my son asked, "You are making these cotton thread earings? What if they get soaked in rain?"
It got me thinking. I tried various methods of stiffening them and water proofing them. I tried white glue, starch, resin, UV resin. But none of them really gave good results. So I went exploring how are some cloth sheets waterproofed. I finally discovered an industrial process, which luckily not only gave excellent waterproofing, also made them stiff so I could shape them while wet but did not change the appearance of the crocheted flowers. So this query of my son was taken care of.
Now I wanted the flowers to be dangling and so had to make studs from where they would hang. In this process I learnt to use beads, french bullion wire( Salma and dabka) embroidery on stiff felt. And reinforced them with sewing the back with faux leather. This is the method professional designers usually use to make handmade earings strong and long lasting.
I wanted to ensure they were good quality, durable and long lasting. I played around with French boullion wire, and beads, making funky, free hand patterns instead of its old conventional form.
I have finally created a series of floral earings that I have named BIBLA earings.You can find them on the website here: https://www.ilmana.com/designs/bibla-earings .
Bibla was Ammi's childhood calling name, and all her older siblings and parents doted on her with this name.
The whole creative journey was quite labour intensive, with moments, at times, when I doubted if I would be able to finish this. Making creative stuff is a pleasure. But putting them together for sale, and marketing is very stressful, and worst of all to take good enough pictures to make them look as good in photos as in real is NOT my cup of tea.
I am keeping them reasonably priced ( I hope), being mindful of current times, and the time and energy invested in it is not even calculated.
I am not even sure if I would want to do this adventure again. Time will tell.
Lastly, I hope Ammi I have done justice to your name and honor, although I know your skills and standards were way way higher.