Rags to riches: Indie Cotton Route’s artwork from fabric scraps is ground-breaking

Using all the fabric scraps at her disposal, she has created the most colourful artworks of flowers and birds.
Pressed between two pieces of glass and framed, these make for the most eye-catching decor in any space.
Pressed between two pieces of glass and framed, these make for the most eye-catching decor in any space.

What do regular boutiques do with all their leftover fabric? In normal times, they would make toilet bags, jewellery pouches or some such thing. In pandemic times like now, they’ve been churning out masks by the hundreds. But what did Shalini Saluja, owner of  Delhi-based women’s clothing brand, Indie Cotton Route do? None of the above. What she has done, instead, is something so unique and so path-breaking, it simply had to be written about.

Using all the fabric scraps at her disposal, she has created the most colourful artworks of flowers and birds. Pressed between two pieces of glass and framed, these make for the most eye-catching decor in any space. How did she come up with this? Necessity, she replies, was the mother of this invention.

“During lockdown, orders for our clothing reduced drastically and it was becoming very difficult for us to sustain the salaries of my team of 10 tailors and embroiderers. They have been with me for the past 20 years, and depend on us for sustenance, so we had to think of ways to keep them busy. That’s when I hit on the idea of using the fabric scrap around me, or katran as we call it, as art. This did not require any extra raw material and could keep the karigars occupied for days together,” she says.

Since Saluja had been a designer for patchwork quilts exported to the US some years earlier, this piecemeal artwork came naturally to her. She decided to first try out a couple of pieces, hang them in her living room, and see how it went. 

Since she already had a boutique in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, as well as a website where she could display her new product, she did exactly that. Unsurprisingly, orders came in thick and fast. “This is a very new product for us and we hadn’t anticipated it would be liked by so many. We have been receiving inquiries from individual homeowners as well as offices and resorts. People have been sending photos of the rooms they would like to put the artwork in and asking for suggestions,” she says. 

Currently, she is in the process of finalising the entire artwork for a resort in the hills which depicts the flora and fauna of that area. “We are also customising some artwork for an office in Delhi which has a lot of international clients and wanted something different and unusual,” she says. If you’re looking for something different and unusual as well, here’s where to order: www.indiecottonroute.in.

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