Home made cotton masks

I am fascinated by the idea of future production to be "HOMEMADE". Covid19 lockdown forced me to think post-Covid design principles for a sustainable future with homemade approaches for developing products.

My mother and her sisters were raised in Gandhian idea of Khadi Gram Udyog. They learned cottage production skills like making cloth, dyeing, Jaggery blocks, Batic printing, spice powders, home products, and many more.They are comfortable in using tools of sewing machines, hand tools for cooking, crafts, cloth making, gardening, seed making, and so on. They went super productive during Covid. They stitched masks, brewed spice powder, food products like dry Purans, Ayurvedic mixes, and used local Dunzo to deliver to anyone needed all FREE of cost!. For me, this is a revelation in the way we approach product design.

Gandhian methods came alive and showed me the power of community, collective, cottage nature-friendly systems which should be a blueprint for India. They re-used cotton cloth and stitched in a spirit of service to others. This feeling of service and contentment is impossible in the Industrial process.

Homemade production is called craft. It was normal daily life pre-industrial design era. Its distribution was limited to the size of the community or village. As mass production increased we and market became more dependant on Industries and lost the beauty of homemade products. Covid times are challenging and forcing us designers to rethink sustainable production and distribution. Glad to have learnt from my aunts on how valuable this age old style of product design still has relevance and probably shows ways into the future of production and product design.

Leave your request to get your own FREE cotton, washable face masks within Bangalore. Help stop spreading of Covid19 by stopping over 95% of droplets which are fatal for the spread.