He showered her with gifts, starting with a 6-yard-long piece of bazin fabric, the hand-dyed, polished cotton which is the mainstay of Malian fashion.

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It is thus proposed to provide further inputs and add value by incorporating embellishment of the hand woven fabric and introduce motifs and designs to attract the modern consumer.

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Meanwhile, occupations like hand sewing, fabric mending and textile knitting have also seen sharp declines in recent years.

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He says the fabric's edges cut his hand at least a dozen times when he attempted to drape it on a mannequin.

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But in the United States, or elsewhere in the developed world, poverty often goes hand in hand with a fragmented or broken social fabric.

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In 2002 Gambassi agreed to make Brough's footwear, which has to be stitched by hand, since standard machines would rip the thin strips of fabric that are part of her dainty designs.

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Betina has found a way to modernize hand-embroidery techniques and indigenous materials like shell and pineapple weave fabric by playing on the strengths of her youth and her personal style urban with traces of influence from designers like Nicolas Ghesquiere, the team at Kenzo, Proenza Schouler, Givenchy and Alexander Wang.

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With a new formula in hand they built a software and hardware combination that shoots ink directly onto the fabric and then seals it with 400 degrees of heat at a pressure of 100 pounds per square inch.

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While other fabric and wallpaper purveyors, such as Eskayel, are creating the look of shibori patterns through hand-painting, workshops teaching the real thing are popping up from California to Maine giving anyone who's wearied of the ikat trend the opportunity to dye another way.

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