Fabric

Today we measured out the fabric that I brought to Poland from Materials for the Arts - all 25+ kilos of it. I brought very few actual clothes; most of my luggage was fabric and yarn for the installation.

We measured the marketplace - from one side to another, lamppost to lamppost, was 170 of my shoes. (We needed this measurement because we will be stretching fabric from one side to the other.) So we took the suitcase out to the grass in front of Agata's apartment building and laid out all the fabric, then found a broomstick, which measured 4.5 of my shoes, and used the broomstick to measure the fabric. We found that we had quite a bit - 80 times the broomstick. But we still needed more, so Agata's brother Jacek drove us to a shopping area where there were several fabric wholesalers. Agata struck a deal with the first; he offered PLN2.5 per meter if we didn;t need a receipt. The second place had black lining for PLN1.70 per meter, but we wanted grey, not black. The third place, where Agata had spoken to the manager on the phone the day before, took a few tries to find. But it was worth it- they had several grey fabrics, one for PLN1 per meter, anthe others for PLN2 per meter. We bought about 150 meters, for a total of PLN200. Art is so glamorous.