Research on Whalley Range

So, for my sustainable India research, to see if could get my hands on some hessian rice sacks, and get some primary photos of indian attire, I made a trip to Whalley Range. There is also a shop in Bradford called Bombay Stores that sells hand made indian designer attire, so when I went for my interview, I decided to go there and see if I could take some pictures, but photography wasn't allowed in the store which was really annoying because I just wanted to use the images as primary research. The same thing happened on Whalley Range. The shop owners probably thought I was going to steal their designs, despite me explaining myself that it was for a college project and that I could get them some free advertising in the exhibition, but they were adamant that photography was not allowed. There were only 2 shops that let me take photos, but the problem with that was that the suits were not hand made. The reason that I wanted to take photos of clothes that were hand made and had hand embroidery on them was because I want to do some embroidery on my piece, and Indian hand made clothes are lavishly full of zardosi, beads and glam. I would like an element of this to be in my piece - whatever that may be. 

As well as going to the clothes shops, I went to the Asian cash and carry in the hope that maybe they would be able to get hold of some sacks for me, and if not, at least I would be able to take some pictures of the rice and flour bags so I could get hold of some hessian and using the photos create a design to print onto it with. This was one of the parts of my trip that was successful. I also went to a take away and asked them to save me some flour and rice bags. I didn't really expect them to put any aside for me, but when I went back a couple of days ago, they had put 5 aside for me, which was really helpful. This has also helped me think about my colour scheme a bit more. I have thought about it and have decided that I want to use blues and purples as my colour theme. Most of the bags that I have managed to collect are of different shades of blue and purple. This will help develop my experiments and refine them towards my final piece. 

These are the images from the cash and carry of flour bags. I went in the hope of finding hessian rice bags but they didn't have any, and I took these images in case I didn't find any rice sacks, I could use the material used to make the rice bags and turn these into prints.