Tailor Made Clothes

Typical fabric booth

But I’ll get off my soap box from the last post and share more about the tailoring process.  The fun thing about fabrics is new ones come every week, so there is always a pretty good selection.  

Once I have my kanga, I bring it to Grace, my tailor, and use a picture and a translator to explain what I want.  My fashion tastes are very different than the average Rwandan’s so she tends to be a little confused by my requests and takes what I like to call ‘creative liberties’ to make it more fashionable in her eyes (Fun fact, this is the reason I am too scared to have yet gotten my hair trimmed here).  It’s always a surprise when I go back to pick it up!  Here are some of my new clothes along with the pictures of my original concept.

I got kanga for my desk to warm up my room!

My pictures are all from modcloth.com.  For this dress, I wanted it to be the same as the left dress with not too much flair in the skirt, only with a V neck and cap sleeves like in the right picture. 

Here is the final product.  She definitely added her own spin to it.

This style of having what I like to call ‘tshirt sleeves’ is very popular in Rwanda, along with the wide collar and sleeve trim.  I might adjust this when I go home again to bring it back to my original vision.  

Another dress:

I love the neckline of my example dress and my roommate had just gotten one with a similar, flowy skirt. 

I love how it turned out! 

It's my favorite so far!