Like a kitten with string

I've been hearing good things about Sari ribbons for a while now, and after reading some more about them on Dearest Jackdaw I thought I'd have a search.

Genuine sari ribbons are produced by cooperatives of women, who make some extra money for themselves tearing up old saris into strips and selling them on for craft use for a fair trade price. There's an awful lot of shops on Etsy selling them for widely varying costs and quantities, it's difficult to know where to start. But in the interest of buying local (for speed of delivery as much as British loyalty!) I found the lovely shop of Sassa Lyne who sells amazing yarns as well as mixed bags of Sari strips.

The listing was done by weight rather than total length so I didn't really know how much I would be getting, but the colours looked lovely so i took a chance. No more than a couple of days later a bulging jiffy bag landed on my doorstep and I opened it up to find a packed ziploc bag exploding with this






Now sorting and tidying my craft items is a little private joy of mine, which is ironic considering how chaotic I usually leave the space around me (just ask my fiancé, it's an ongoing bone of contention with him), so sitting down to sort and bundle my tangle of ribbons wasn't exactly an onerous task.



So off I went, sorting and wrapping and trimming loose threads with my kitten looking on curiously. She was itching to jump straight into the centre of the pile and wreak havoc, but luckily she caught my seriously warning glance!



On and on I went, pulling more and more strips out on the seemingly never decreasing pile



It took me almost a full day, but I came out with over 60 separate strips of the most amazing variety of beautiful colours and many over a metre in length! There's some patterns, stripes and plaids often including beautiful metallic thread, and many pieces of plain but beautifully coloured silk. But the real winners are the silk taffeta pieces where the warp and weft threads are different colours, making them shine amazing hues and giving them bright contrasting frayed edges.



Overall, the purchase was a total steal. I know I'll really enjoy using these ribbons on many many hats to come in my millinery future. I think there's more here than I can use in a lifetime!