Orissa Textile Art
Orissa is a must go destination if you share a love for textiles. It’s home to many unique textile techniques with fabrics being produced all over the state. It is mostly famous for silk ikat weaves through the process of Bandha creating unusual patterns and vibrant colours keeping it in popular demand all over the world today. It"s fabrics are also rich in kantha stitch embroidery, a wonderful technique to embellish any of your old fabrics to create beautiful textile design projects.Kan
Kantha embroidery
One of the sensational stitching techniques seen in Orissa is Kantha embroidery. It is one of the most important textile arts in Eastern India. Like most traditional textile techniques, it is both a fine art and a household craft, and a form of personal expression for the artist.
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Origins of Kantha stitch embroidery
Kantha embroidery began 500 centuries ago in West Bengal and Orissa as a method of reusing and recycling dhotis, sarees and other pieces of clothing Bengalis were reluctant to throw away. It was a means of creating useful household items from used fine quality muslin and cotton saris. Yarn salvaged from worn clothing was used to embroider large repeating motifs and designs across whole pieces of fabric. This is a wonderful process to transform your textiles receiving world wide demand. Even Hillary Clinton feel in love with the exquisite displays of Kantha embroidery.
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What is Kantha embroidery?
Kantha embroidery is unique because of its extensive use of the running stitch (which is called ‘kantha’ locally). This is one of the basic hand stitching techniques suitable for beginners, threading the needle up from the back and then down again. Usually the stitch under the fabric should be shorter than the one above leading to the distinctive wavy wrinkled look to the fabric. Remember the closer and tighter the stitches, the stiffer the fabric will feel compared to the stitching being further apart.
Traditional Kantha embroidery involves running stitches across the whole fabric design normally in a single colour but there are various standard styles for stitching this. This is classified broadly into two categories aligned (JOD), not aligned (BEJOD). Butti is usually denotes a small motif placed throughout the fabric.
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How to apply the Kantha stitch to your craft projects
This delightful stitch can be applied to all light and medium weight fabrics although cotton and silk are best suited for this embroidery. Colouricious first bock print the fabric to create a stunning base to stitch across. You can also block print the specific motifs and design ot act as a template to trace with your stitch and acts as an fabulous embellishment. There are many different applications for Kantha. These can be categorised into a few of the below:
Lep Kantha - generation of warm and heavily padded quilts using kantha stitch.
Sujani Kantha - creating blankets or spreads for ceremonial occasions.
Baiton Kantha – using square fabric pieces stitched to produce coverings for valuable objects or as wraps for books
Oar kantha – to develop pillow covers
Archilata Kantha is used for covering mirrors
Durjani Kantha is small pieces of fabric inside of a wallet
Rumal Kantha which is used to cover plates
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Try Kantha stitch yourself!
There are so many ways to wonderfully apply this technique to create your gorgeous textile art. Just be creative as you don’t have to worry about going wrong as this embroidery is adaptable. One of its great attributes is you can keep this project going for months, not having to worry about keeping to a pattern. It is a great way of repurposing any old fabrics you have laying about along with block printing. Hand or machine washing would be adequate to maintain the longevity of the fabric and embroidery.
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Colouricious Holidays
You will witness the women in India hand sew and embellish beautiful fabric pieces used as Kantha sprees and Kantha quilts. You will enjoy the company of like-minded people enjoying a creative and inspiring textile holiday learning about different hand printing and sewing techniques that you will then explore yourselves. Visit www.colouriciousholidays.com to find out what amazing adventure you could be on next!
Subsistence oriented economy of the tribes here is based on food gathering, hunting and fishing, thus, revolving around forests. While farming, they make use of a very simple technology and a simple division of labor often limited to the immediate family. But they lose out because their holdings are small and unproductive, lacking irrigation facility due to a hilly and undulating terrain.
Many tribes practice shifting cultivation or Podu Chasa, also known as slash and burn. They select a plot of land on a mountain slope, slash down all the trees and bushes and burn them to ashes. Spreading the ashes evenly over the land, they wait for the rains before planting their crops. Due to cultivation for two or three seasons on one plot of land the soil gets depleted and the tribes move on. It is a way of life for them.
vegetarianism. But a significant proportion of population yet relishes fish and other sea food delicacies like prawns, crabs and lobsters that are found in plenty at the vast coastline of the state. Cooked with little or absolutely no oil, Oriya food has a less calorific value.
Colouricious Holidays have lots of different holidays exploring India, Japan, Bhutan and Uzbekistan. We will be expanding this all the time with more
Bagru is a small village located near Jaipur, the capital City of Rajasthan. It"s home to the Chippa community who have been practicing a unique style of printing for more than 350 years. Colouricious holidays visited Bagru, running Bagru block printing workshops, working with traditional printers and helping support this ancient craft which faces threat from globalisation.
Scouring- locally called ‘Hari Sarana’
Dyeing is a process in which the dye reacts with two mordants at two different locations on the same print giving two different shades of colors. As mentioned earlier ‘alizarin’ is used as the dye throughout Rajasthan. The colours obtained in conjunction with the two mordants are red (with alum) and block (with ferrous). Dyeing is carried out in large copper vessels (‘tambri’) which are heated by wood fire. Alizarin is filled in small cloth-bags (‘potali’) and dipped in the vessel. The quantity of alizarin dye is calculated by the experienced dyer. ‘Dhawadi phool’, a local flower is boiled along with alizarin to avoid patches and staining. Once the dyed fabric is ready (usually it takes half-an-hour), it is taken out of the copper vessel and left on the ground for drying.
Creating your own fabric designs or making your own paper for craft projects needn"t be difficult. Colouricious love to experiment with metallic paints. Using wooden printing blocks, metallic print fabric can transform textiles into these beautiful collage designs below. Due to the reflective nature of the paint, it blends well with any dyed fabric generating this magical, vibrant appearance and is the best way to embellish your textiles.
If wooden block printing isn"t your cup of tea then don"t be afraid to get creative. Metallic paint can be used in many wonderful ways. This paint works best on natural fibres than synthetic as the paint is made from a mixture of a pigment and a glue-like binder and therefore sticks to rougher surfaces easier. The sparkle that these wonderful paints create will enhance any of your creations. Unlike fabric dye, it only requires ironing to fix the paint.