Cottage Patch, artisanal craftsmanship

Cottage Patch,

Fabiola, a very dear longtime friend of Jessica, was in town for a few days and asked us to visit her at her friends' shop in Ampang, northern part of KL.

I admit, the facade of this shop does look run down a bit, fading colours, non-too appealing signboard...

But as the proverb says "don't judge a book by its cover"........do make an effort to bypass your initial prejudgement.

Solely operated by a loving couple, Wai & Alice, with the help of some family and staff members. According to them they've been operating since the early 80's.......blimey, thats almost 30 years...

Beside the usual retail of fabrics for sewing lovers, selling all kinds of embroidery, conducting sewing classes, making soft toys and etcetera........

Deeper inside within the confines of this shop you can find the Walhalla for sewing lovers.

Actually more alike sewing patches,...."remember when your mum sewed a patch on your pants to cover the hole? or sewed a name tag or badge on your uniform?"

Cottage Patch does all that, but on a much, much grander scale.  

Wai, the maestro, comes up with the design and patterns, which he claims is all in his head.....just does it on the fly, .........and sews patches on patches on patches........creating a huge, amazing, grandiose quilt.

And no, we are not talking 1 quilt......the loving couple presented us with a selection of their handcrafted quilts.  And suffice to say, we were totally taken aback by the fine artistry.

let's start with flowery themes

psychedelic if you ask me

thousands and thousands of individual,unique patches on a quilt

 As each quilt is pure man-made, thread by thread, you can imagine how looooooong it takes to finish just one whole piece. I confess, it takes patience, lots of patience and dilengence


The prices demanded are quite steep, but if you take in the hours spend on producing a quilt,.....and bear in mind, of each single quilt there is only one version on the whole planet.  How to put a monetary figure on such a piece of work?


Quite understandable that some pieces are totally not for sale, as they are only one in a million.....it's alike parting with its offspring.....




Would we easily part with our ever growing dragon girl ourselves? Not right now, and we shiver when we think of that event happening in the future.....




Well, we didn't part away with a quilt in the boot of our car, how mightily impressed we were though...........but maybe one day, who knows....

Fanning out the candles

Fanning out the candles,

Last chapter of the festivities at Fo Guang Shan, the Buddhist monastery order.

Finally after a fortnight of celebrations, the time had come to end this year's festivities.

To properly mark the end of it, there was an elaborate praying session held by the nuns and monks, involving chanting, reciting Buddha's prayers....and this being a first time for me......I witnessed the participants holding candles and blowing them out.....apparently it is a symbol of bringing in the "Light" into one's body for the coming year.....whatever that means....

And to truly mark the end of the prayers, two nuns, each standing adjacent to the main praying hall, recited some prayers and respectively beating on a big drum  or gonged the bell as shown in below pics and vids..............

And with the sounds of the final drumbeat and bell gong slowly fading away............life returns back to normal,.....

As in peace and quietness......nuns and monks in their solitary search for Enlightment....and as for us...common folks, who might have missed out on Buddha's blessing...

Don't worry, always another year....till NEXT year :)

Buddhist Relics and my beads watches

Buddhist Relics,

Third  part of my 2011 endeavours at Fo Guang Shan temple.

Across the main praying hall is a big building which I always thought houses the admin department and dorms for the nuns and monks.  Little did I know that hidden within those walls there is a huge room containing a treasure trove of Buddhist related artifacts and relics.

This room is only accessible to the public on selected days of the year and save for the big Buddha bust which is placed prominently  in the center of the room, all the other statues and statuettes are all safely locked away in display cabinets.  

According to the abbess who herself took me on a preview tour before the festivities commenced, all the relics have been donated.  


Below pics represent just a selection of the countless artifacts which the Buddhist Order has in store....'cos apparently due to the rather vast number of items they have in store, the nuns and monks rotate the selection of the relics on a regular basis. Thus regular visitors will always find something new to appreciate.........Some artifacts are genuinely that old and thus priceless, whereas others originate from a date not so long ago, but that doesn't mean they are rubbish.....au contraire....


 And as you can see for yourselves below, some of them are of an exquisite quality, displaying a high level of fine craftsmanship.  

To round this story off.......great was my surprise to find the beads watches that I've produced for the Buddhist monastery were on display too, next to blessed amulets.

Does that mean that my watches are already considered relics or even artifacts? 

I sure do hope so........at least within my lifetime, that is :p

Blessed Beads Watches

Blessed Beads Watches,

Continuing on my previous post ,  remember that I told you all that this Buddhist monastery "Fo Guang Shan" organizes these annual events in order to generate funds.

It would be absurd to charge the flock of devotees an entry fee to the temple (this ain't a theme park after all), so in order to  generate  funds, the temple sells a plethora of Buddhist related merchandize, ranging from books, dvd's, blessed amulets, stationary and etcetera.....too many to name.

A few of you might know that I was previously working in the watch manufacturing industry, OEM & ODM, co-ordinating design and sales departments respectively,.....so why not kill two birds with one stone then. Thus this particular project kickstarted last year July.

The monastery order was very receptive to my proposal of developing a combination of prayer beads and accompanying watch head and thus the gears were put into motion of drawing/sampling and producing several beads watches. Below are just 2 drawings out of a plethora that we presented to the monastery order.

Taking a camera picture of the Buddha statue, located in the main praying hall, and sending it over for rendering to the design boys in China. My guys in China somehow managed to emboss it on the watch dial.....much to the delight of the monks and nuns and myself included.....nothing is impossible nowadays.

Credit has to go to my former colleagues in China, who helped me tremendously with the manufacturing process, and mind you, don't even think it's made out of cheap stuff.....we're talking stainless steel components, Japanese quartz watch movements and etcetera.....it's the real deal I'm talking about.

With the Buddhist temple buying price set, we duly made the first batch of samples, presenting an assortiment of different beads and watches for them to choose from. The choice of beads were so huge that the temple ordered additional beads bracelets on top of that :)

And then it was just a matter of jotting down the details of the purchase order (quantity, colours, sizes, packaging)........The order was only for 1.000 pieces, just testing the 'market', and hopefully in time to come, other chapters worldwide of this Buddhist order might place a similar purchase order themselves.  Then "dzing, dzing"....(fingers crossed)

The watches arrived just in the nick of time for Fo Guang Shan's annual event.....

Have to admit that I felt kinda proud to witness all the efforts spent on this particular project coming to a fruitful conclusion.  More than a dozen boxes were flown in by courier, and a bunch of temple volunteers were checking and counting each single piece :p

And then the final hurdle : the abbess of the temple (= superior of the nuns), gave her blessing, ...... that means the watches are 'blessed' with good Karma powers :).  

Ofcourse, not before she and her fellow nuns tried the watches and beads bracelets out themselves :p

So in the end when I was doing my rounds as security cum traffic volunteer on Fo Guang Shan's temple grounds not long after the delivery of the goods in question.....I wasn't surprised to see it displayed and up for sale among all the other Buddhist paraphernalia.

Look....my "babies" on the table for the general public to buy......and furthermore, blessed by the temple order.......

Bring on the Karma !!!