The first course of tailoring and clothes design has been completed after that most of the basic techniques in tailoring and design skills have been covered both theoretically through discussions in the class and practically through doing home work. The course teacher is the one who decides the design of the clothes and each participant has made five designs each. Some of this home work has been returned to amendment and alterations according to the teacher's advice. The teacher herself is convinced that her students have made bounces and leaps in learning the art of tailoring after training them for a month and that she has not been expecting this success. The last two days of the course has been dedicated to learning the design of wedding dresses.
Wedding dress design and tailoring is considered to be one of the most difficult sewing arts in Iraq as it requires a lot of effort to make the precise design according to certain measurements. As the girl wears this dress once in her life there are not many tailors who sew these types of dresses in comparison to the other daily designs. It is also a very expensive dress as it can cost up to 600,000 ID and the special design can cost more than one million ID. Therefore, brides choose to rent their wedding dress which will cost them about 150,000 ID a night.
The first thing that got prepared in the display hall is the manikin dolls as it will be impossible to prepare a dress without it. The teacher bought different types of fabrics, accessories that are essential in the wedding dress design. As well as that, she chose a wedding dress designs that she extracted a from a magazine called Al Hijab as those designs agree with the fashions that are suitable for the Iraqi society.
After that the teacher explained the task for the students, Zahra Al Bassam, who is a volunteer, gave out fabric pieces that constitute a wedding dress to four students chosen on the basis of their advanced skilfulness in tailoring. In the next session all these pieces of fabrics were collected and sewed together to make the wedding dress. The wedding dress was put on the display doll to view after each stage of sewing it together and even mending the defaults that might have emerged during the sewing process. The teacher is going to make the dress ready after putting the last touches on it so it will be ready for display in the final day of the course where presents and qualification certificate will be given to the participants.
The Charity Bank for small businesses is one of the projects made by the Iraqi Charities Forum where 43 sewing machines of both industrial and domestic type along with fabrics and sewing kits were distributed to 43 widowed, divorced and disadvantaged women. This project aims to help these women to support their families to secure an income through starting their projects by taking interest free loans that can be simply paid back in instalments.
For more information about projects and if you would like to contribute with loans and donations to help as many women as possible to stand on their own feet please click on the link below:
