Madhu Sri Tailors

Our tailoring shop is at house number 3-12 in Vavilala, Nellikuduru. It is a busy little place filled with the sound of sewing machines running almost all day long. We have rolls of thread in every color you can think of lined up on the wall. Sometimes the floor is covered in small bits of leftover fabric and loose strings that we have to sweep up every few hours. People from around Warangal bring us their cloth pieces for shirts and blouses, and we spend a lot of time marking them with white chalk before we start cutting. The table where we do the cutting is quite large and takes up most of the room. We have an old iron that stays hot for hours so we can press the seams flat. During the festival seasons, the shop gets really crowded with bags of fabric waiting to be worked on. We keep our notebooks on a small shelf where we write down everyone's measurements and the dates they need their clothes back. It is quiet in the mornings before the neighbors start moving about, but by noon the shop is full of talk and the clicking of needles. We don't have any big signs or fancy decorations, just our machines and the clothes hanging on the rack by the door. It is simple work but it keeps us busy from morning until the sun sets over the village.