Allahabad, June 2014
This Singer treadle sewing machine has been used over the years by the womenfolk of the house to stitch everything from curtains to children's clothes. Till very recently, there used to be a system of hiring the services of an itinerant tailor, who would travel from one house to another on the basis of personal recommendations. In return for a daily wage and lunch, he would repair old clothes or make new ones on machines like this one.
These tailors could copy designs skilfully from magazines, and an English lady recalled, in her memoirs of life in colonial India, a tailor who copied her old dress so literally he even imitated the repair patches of the old dress in the new one!
The work in progress is a new dining sheet, with lace trimmed edges.