Mata-ni-Pachedi, Ahmedabad
The grey fabric is unsuitable for dyeing or printing process in the beginning and for this reason the cloth is soaked in water for 24 hours to remove the sizes (starch). Fabric is then soaked in the paste of harda powder (tamarind seed powder) and water for about 10-15 minutes and dried in sun. The sketching of the required pattern of any one of the form of Mata (Goddess) is drawn at the center and surrounded by other images usually derived from the puranic myths. Outlines of the drawings are manually painted using bamboo stick/brush with black color, which is prepared by heating a mixture of jaggery, scrap iron metal (iron sulphate) and kachuka atta (tamarind seed powder), the gaps are filled with red color made by heating the mixture of the water, tamarind seed powder and alum. The fabric looks yellow with black colored figures on it and then dried under direct sunlight.
The fabric is boiled with alizarin which is a yellow powder made from the root of the madder plant, traditionally used as a mordant that reacts with alum to bring out the red color. Dhawda ka phool (Dhawda flowers, Rajasthan flower locally called) is added once it reaches the boiling point and checked in intervals to maintain the white areas of the cloth where it is not painted. The craftsmen wash the cloth at the banks of river Sabarmati in Ahmedabad so that excess color flows away and doesn’t stain on the fabric, then the fabric is spread on the banks for sun bleaching and drying, where no foot of man or animal is allowed to be placed on this sacred cloth. Work stops completely during the rainy season as the damp wet weather is not feasible for printing. One person can make about 25-30 Mata ni pachedi’s in a month.
