Beautiful Ideas Help the World: ASIA {Hand and Cloth Giveaway}

Sanaih kantha
Sanaih pantha Sanaih
parvata langhanam.

Slowly one stitches rags,
Slowly one traverses the path
And slowly one climbs to the top of the mountain.

-Traditional Bengali Sloka

Home, my friends. We fly home on Christmas morning. Ready to unwrap the gift of 2013.

As the blog rests quietly during this last stretch of December and we amble down from our mountaintop milestone of completing a year of travel abroad, I’m happy to share my final Beautiful Ideas Help the World post of 2012.

While moving from continent to continent, living out of a backpack, I’ve been unable to pack souvenirs home for everyone, but I’m grateful to be hosting giveaways along with each Beautiful Ideas post, offering friends and readers a little chance at something special from overseas while highlighting projects impacting lives through beauty, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

Feature Four: Hand & Cloth: Bangladesh
Enter to be in the giveaway for this beautiful, one-of-a-kind Hand & Cloth “No. 2” blanket from the Blue & Gray Silk Collection by leaving a comment; read below for the full story.

How do you enter to win this lovely green and gold and blue hand-stitched silk blanket?

Easy!

I’m not a fan of gimmicky giveaways, so I’m not requiring tweets or follows, but I’m providing links to Hand & Cloth, and I’d love to invite you to follow the project’s story and think about purchasing from them the next time you want your dollars and cents to go toward something beautiful.

To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment below answering one of the following questions. (Leave a second comment answering the other question if you’d like to enter twice.)

A) What mountain top (literal or figurative) have you reached after a series of diligent footsteps?

B) What reminder makes you feel most comfortable in your own skin?

Giveaway is open to anyone, anywhere. (That means you lovely international readers as well!) All you need is a mailing address. Winner will be chosen at random and notified by email. If winner does not respond within 48 hours, a new winner will be selected and notified. See here for full giveaway terms and details.

Giveaway closes at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time (that’s Oregon!), on Saturday, January 5th (the one-year anniversary of the beginning of our journey around the world).

This story is special to me in particular at this homecoming-time. Two very precious and beautiful Hand & Cloth blankets are among the remaining possessions that I kept packed away after throwing antiques from covered wagons..and when I think of returning to Oregon and feeling rooted in my surroundings, I think of the feeling of these blankets against my skin.

Hand & Cloth sells handmade kantha blankets crafted by at-risk women in Bangladesh empowered to leave the red-light life through transitional job training opportunities [ref]Women working for BASHA (“basha” means house and “asha” means hope in Bengali) and selling their handmade products through Hand & Cloth complete a one year job training program with MCC and CUP prior to beginning full-time work[/ref] and the ability to develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills in the context of a supportive, faith-based environment.

Kantha Blankets
In Sanskrit, the word kantha simply means rags; yet this story of kantha blankets is one of fabric and lives transformed into treasures.

I’ve purchased four Hand & Cloth kantha blankets over the years, both as gifts and personal keepsakes. They are not snatched off of registries or available at any department store; they are crafted one by one, each unique, like the precious women who make them and like the life stories they and we are leading in vast and varied corners of the world.

The Kantha Tradition:

For centuries, poor Bengali women have taken their discarded cloth and sewn them together with a simple running stitch to create something new. The functional kantha dorokha (“two-sided quilt”) was not a work of art, but simply what the poorest families used to keep warm. Kantha also had an aspect of intimacy. Old cloth in Bangladesh is said to keep the user safe from harm. Women stitched kantha for their loved ones–for their children, their husbands, their parents. The earliest known mention of the Bengali kantha is five hundred years old–in Krishnadas Kaviraj’s Sri Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita, he refers to a kantha sent to him by his mother…

Even the most practical kantha is creative and spontaneous in nature. It is no easy task to create a functional quilt out of old, worn rags! Overtime, a more elaborate nakshi kantha tradition developed. Most kantha was made by illiterate women who would stitch stories into their quilts–which often would take years to complete. The same kantha is known to have been worked on by a grandmother, mother, and daughter. Many of the kantha motifs reflect the needlewoman’s desire for happiness, marriage, and fertility. These women would then “autograph” their pieces either with their name or by indicating their relationship with the person for whom the kantha is intended.

When I first read about Sarah Aulie’s work with Hand & Cloth (formerly “Hatha Ka Bana“[ref] Text from the first article I read on Hatha Ka Bana, originally published in Radiant Magazine[/ref]), my mother in law was recently home from a meaningful trip to India, and Ted and I ordered a blanket to give her as a Christmas gift.

I was so inspired by the story of these blankets’ creation that I ordered one for myself as well, happy to know that the investment of money was going to women who could know the tangible benefit of honorably earned cash.

My first blanket, light blue and aqua, with hints of gold along the trim, joined our home early in our married life and became a centerpiece in our living room over the next handful of years. That soft and perfectly imperfect blanket graced each of our dwellings: our little country cottage in the Willamette Valley, then our second-story duplex carved from a cute old 1890s Portland house, and finally our 1960s cube at the Stepping Stones apartment project. In 2010, my best friend got married, and I chose another beautiful, sari blanket – this one fuchsia pink with more gorgeous gold – as a wedding gift that could be treasured for always.

At that same time, I took the opportunity to order another for my home as a little experiment. Life felt unsettled, external signals were chaotic, and in the face of unknowns, I chose to use my new olive green and gold blanket to create a spiritual space, dedicating it as a mantle of sorts – a comfort to remind me, when wrapped in its luxurious folds on a cold morning, drinking steaming tea and reading words of Life, that I was a loved and cherished daughter of a King, at home in my own skin. No matter the outward surroundings, the circumstances or the settings, the truth was true, and the tangible silk reminder honored the life of the woman who made it and the life that God had given me.

My two treasured Hand & Cloth blankets: one blue and cottony soft, the other silky smooth and olive green, each crafted beautifully with perfectly imperfect stitches, each made by the hand of a woman I’ll never know and will always remember.


When we sold off and gave away many of our possessions, I kept this special trunk of keepsakes packed away for our return.

Paring down our possessions was a great exercise in liberty and gratefulness. The exhilaration of living with life literally strapped to our backs has given us new perspective on the meaning of “essentials.”

Now, as we prepare to come home and engage our roots, I anticipate returning to the comforts of those few particular familiar treasures we kept and the reminder (when I’ll need it most) that while my external world is constantly shifting, I am, above anything, a loved and cherished daughter of a King, at home in my own skin.

Hand & Cloth’s vision is powerful: Through dignified work and the Word of God, Hand & Cloth offers livelihood and Life to women at-risk.

Old Testament writers used the Hebrew word רפא (rapha) to refer to healing, especially divine healing. More literally, rapha means to sew together or to stitch. And so our name, Hand & Cloth, is an image not only of the creative work women are doing, but also of the creative, healing work God is doing in their lives. As each product is handmade by a woman, our hope is that she would come to know that she is handmade by God.

Gorgeous Images by M Lindsay Photography and Meredith Elsen for Hand & Cloth [ref] Many thanks to M Lindsay Photography and to Meredith Elsen for the beautiful kantha blanket images. I’ve always been sincerely impressed with the way Hand & Cloth uses beautiful imagery to communicate the story of these precious women and their art of renewal.[/ref]

I do hope you’ll enter to win this beautiful blanket from Hand & Cloth. Consider peeking at their other beautiful collections, and be sure to leave comments answering one or both of the questions above to be in the draw.

Slowly one stitches rags,
Slowly one traverses the path
And slowly one climbs to the top of the mountain.

Thank you so much for following our journey in 2012.

The story does not stop here. The future is coming. I’m excited to greet it, and I’m eager to continue sharing beautiful stories of creative and healing work all along the way…

This post is part of my Beautiful Ideas Help the World giveaway series featuring organizations I personally love, impacting lives around globe through beauty, creativity, and entrepreneurship. No tweets or follows or gimmicks are required to participate, but please consider keeping in touch and following along on our respective journeys:

twoOregonians
twoOregonians on Facebook | @twoOregonians

Hand & Cloth
Hand & Cloth on Facebook | @handandcloth