For a tailoring class, the room is surprisingly neat. The bits and pieces of cloth all chopped off by the girls have been bundled up in a corner and the final products - from nighties to tiny frocks - hang on the wire by the window. The class run at a small room at Sri Chitra Home (for destitutes and infirm) has boosted the confidence of some 30 girls who are now dreaming big of running a boutique by themselves someday.
It is a certificate course of six-months’ duration run by the Central Polytechnic, Vattiyoorkavu as part of their ‘Community development through polytechnics’ at Sri Chitra Home that has boosted their confidence. A small tailoring unit, with 15 machines and two embroidery machines, was already working in full swing at Sree Chitra for sometime now. But the girls had lacked a professional training and finish to their work, which they are now making up through the course.
This Onam, two months after the course began, the girls stitched their ‘onakodi’ and the dress materials of all the 285 inmates at the Poor Home, who include 65 boys too, at the unit. Earlier, they used to get it stitched outside or their families did it for them. Whether the younger boys want a pencil-fit pant or the girls need a fitting churidar, the tailoring unit is all help now.
‘’They knew the basics and much more. Some of the girls already knew how to stitch salwars and frocks. But through the course, we have sharpened their skills, taught them new techniques, made them realise the need for precise arithmetic in cuts; and next they will be taught new embroidery methods too,’’ said Ajitha Rani, the tutor from Central Polytechnic, Vattiyoorkavu.
Amrita, one of the girls, makes the right cut in seconds and comes up with a brilliant figure-hugging pattern in girls’ fashion. Dhanuja is an expert with blouse and Poor Home Superintendent Aleyamma Varghese would vouch for that. ‘’I gave her two blouse pieces, though the first one had some problems, she soon made it up and gave me a perfectly stitched second one. Very few tailors perfect the skill of stitching blouses,’’ Aleyamma sounds like a proud mother. And indeed the girls call her ‘Amma.’
‘’I have promised them that once they complete the course and emerge as professionals, we will expand our tailoring unit here and take up outside orders too. That could bring some income to them too,’’ she said.
The training is in progress till evening in two batches of 15 students each and it will end in two months’ time.
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