Textile Workshops

Textile Workshops

Whether you are looking for a textile course, class or textile ideas you will love Colouricious Holidays textile workshops. Ranging from block printing to embroidery you are sure to love the creative inspiration that awaits you in India! Colouricious Holidays specialise in creating bespoke craft tours from organising 5* hotels to the creative itinerary. Every workshop will be shared with you r workshops always lovely atmosphere with great teachers

Colouricious Holidays’ Golden Triangle Textile Treasure Hunt is less than a year away! No matter if you"ve been on  many Colouricious Holidays or your a first timer, you will have a fantastic tour of India seeing the beautiful fabrics in the textile heartland.

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The Golden Triangle is defined by the notional triangle drawn between the cities of Dehli, Agra and Jaipur, the triangle also includes a must-see locations such as the Taj Mahal,the silk factories of Varanasi, and the carpet weavers of Agra …to say nothing of the striking desert landscapes of Rajasthan. Here, the weaving and dying arts stretch back to their earliest incarnations, many of them developed by the Indus Valley Civilisation. The Golden Triangle boasts dozens of museums and study centres where the ancient arts of the region are still taught in their traditional forms, and preserved as cultural treasures.

A few of the workshops made as part of the Treasure Hunt include

Chikan Embroidery workshop

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Chikan literally translates as ‘embroidery’. It is a style that developed in Lucknow, and the village of Chowk in that region produces a great deal of it. It involves white thread embroidered onto pastel-tined muslin and cotton garments.

Slightly ‘modernised’ versions of the Lucknawi chican style include coloured thread, bead, mirror work, and other embellishments adopted from related traditions. The base fabric palette has also been expanded to include chiffons, silks and other light, soft materials.

 

Hand Block Printing Experience

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Northern India has long been famous for its continuing wooden block printing tradition. The ‘blocks’ are kind of hand-carved stamp which is dipped in dye and applied, again and again, to a silk, cotton or linen fabric to make a pattern. It can be very simple or extremely ornate, depending on the tastes and the exact tradition of the artisan.

This is an excellent opportunity for you to learn the technique from traditional craftspeople, and make it a part of your own work.

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Weaving workshop in Sarai Mohanna village

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Sarai Mohanna is a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi District, most famous for its silk weaving tradition. The Banarasi saris made here are considered to be among the finest and most desirable in India. Such a traditionally hand crafted sari can take as much as 6 months to create.

 



Of course, that is just a taste of what you’ll experience as part of the 2019 Golden Triangle Textile Treasure Hunt. Over the next few weeks we’ll highlight more of the one-of-a-kind events, locations and experiences you could visit.

If you would like to learn more about the Golden Triangle Treasure Hunt in particular, just visit the Colouricious Holiday website. But hurry, holidays like the Golden Triangle Treasure Hunt fill up quickly!

Learn, create and be happy!

Colouricious holidays craft tour

Come on a craft tour to Kerala

Colouricious Holidays offer you the opportunity to travel the Kerala region of India and delve into the wonderful craft culture that has been thriving there for centuries. On this craft tour you will visit crafting centres participating in a a range of creative workshops all organised for your enjoyment. You won"t have to worry about a thing! Here are a few of the crafts you can expect to experience, ready to takeaway new skills for your own creative home projects.

TASARA Centre for Creative Weaving

The TASARA Centre is located in the Beypore village of Kerala,along India’s west coast. ‘Tasara’ means ‘weaver’s shuttle’ in Sanskrit. The centre works to bring together both contemporary and traditional weavers and other textile artists to encourage both a respect for traditional forms and real innovation. The TASRA centre’s Artist in Residence programme has given studio space and facilities to support to artists and artisans throughout India for more than 25 years. And has jump-started the careers of many successful textile artists and painters.

TASRA also provides extensive training opportunities in weaving and both traditional and batik dyeing, using natural dyes and pigments as well as modern chemical colours. Its annual textile workshops have become a gathering place for weavers and textile artists throughout India to meet, network and collaborate.

Pottery Making 

Kolenchery is a small town in Kerala State, specifically a few kilometres east of Cocin in Ernakulam district, near India’s west coast. One of its most important features, as far as Colouricious Holidays is concerned, is the Pottery Making Unit which focuses on the traditional terra cotta pottery techniques of Kerala State. Not only is this an opportunity to see the works of some of India’s premier workers in terra cotta pottery, it is a chance to gain insight into the way this traditional crafting material (and a mixture of traditional and modern techniques) can be used to create art that is both thoroughly modern yet truly timeless.

Toddy Tapping

Throughout Kerala, toddy tapping is conducted in the same way it has been for hundreds if not thousands of years. The ‘palm toddy’ or simply ‘toddy’, is harvested from coconut palms without cutting down the coconuts – if they are instead carefully ‘tapped’, the milk inside will refill over time. In this way, a single tree can produce hundreds of litres of coconut milk each day. You’ll learn how this is accomplished, and also how to make a delicious palm toddy – even with purchased coconuts at home.

Kalaripayattu

Kalaripayattu is one of India’s oldest martial arts, and one of the oldest continuously practiced martial arts in the world. ‘Kalari’ means battle or battlefield, and ‘Kalaripayattu’ means ‘Practice in the Arts of the Battlefield’. Its written history is more than 2300 years old, but it is believed that many of the practices go back much further. It involves the use of what we would call mideval weapons, especially shields, spears, bows, swords and the more obscure silambam.

To stay up to date with our creative holidays follow are newsfeed or visit our website to book a place!



 

 

 

 

Kantha stitch embroidery

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!

Learn, create, be happy!

 

Create your own Fabric Designs

Create your own Fabric Designs

At Colouricious we are as passionate about the fabrics we print on as the blocks we actually use to print.

We love to make different designs of fabric for our projects and it is really a lot easier to do than you may think. Take a look at the video below and you will see how we can make our fabric designs for our next project from the left over inks on previous projects!

Our DVD Inspired Block Printing gives you loads of ideas of how to create your own fabrics and what to do with them. It is one of our most popular DVDs but as our gift to you, we are letting you download it for free now just by visiting our website.

Download for FREE!

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Halloween Idea

Now the nights are drawing in and with Halloween and Bonfire Night just around the corner, you maybe thinking about some more vibrant and colourful crafts projects to celebrate these occasions. We have the perfect answer for you with a set of fluorescent paints that will look great on dark fabrics, and create a magical effect. If you would like to grab a set, then head over to our website and place your order.

Buy our Fluorescent Paint

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Latest Arrivals

We have just received another delivery from our carvers in India and the boxes were full of lovely designs that have enabled us to create some delightful sets. The blocks were mostly the larger designs which we know are always very popular, but we have added some smaller blocks into some of the sets as well. As usual, click on the image of the set you want to be taken to our website to get your set.

Giant Paisleys

Our Paisley Patterned blocks are always very popular and I am sure these one will be no exception. 6 Larger blocks with a mat, sponges and a cleaning brush.

Buy Now

Bold Patterns

4 detailed large headline blocks for those larger craft projects that can have these bold deigns as a feature image.
Buy Now

Precious Peacock

New Peacock sets are snapped up very quickly by our regular customers and I think this set will be in demand as usual. We have added some gorgeous patterns to our cute Peacock to make this set even more desirable.

Buy Now

Happy Hoppiness

In amongst the larger blocks were these delightful ones that we thought would look excellent together. the rabbit and tree are the headline designs, but the dainty flower and leaf blocks make this a very beautiful set.
Buy Now

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Gorgeous Gujarat

Colouricious is delighted to announce that we have just opened the popular trip to Gujarat for 2017. The spectacular trip will take place in November next year from 7th – 19th. In this 13 day trip you will get to explore the Gujarati region of India taking in sights and sounds as well as visiting workshops and seeing how the villagers design and create their beautiful textiles.

The region of Gujarat is also the home of the world famous Kite Festival of Uttarayan. Made famous in books such as The Kite Runner, The Kite Festival is a uniquely Gujarati phenomenon, when the skies over most cities of the state fill with kites from before dawn until well after dark. The festival marks the days in the Hindu calendar when winter begins turning to summer, known as Makar Sankranti or Uttarayan. On what is usually a bright warm sunny day with brisk breezes to lift the kites aloft, across the state almost all normal activity is shut down and everyone takes to the rooftops and roadways to fly kites and compete with their neighbors. We will be able to see the start of the Kite production in the streets of Ahmedabad.

Watch the video below about the Leading Ladies of Gujarat to give you an idea of what you will see and experience on this beautiful holiday.

If you would like to join us in November next year, then head over to our website and use the online booking form to reserve your place. It is a fantastic trip and we would love for you to join us.

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Colouricious Club Member Deals

The arrival autumn brings a whole new look to our gardens and plants, and it was seeing the leaves falling from the trees that inspired this weeks special club member deal.

Pick any of the blocks or sets from our Leaves and Trees section and receive a 20% discount on every set from this group that you purchase.

You can find the sets to choose from by visiting the Leaves and Trees page of our website and using the code below.

trees20

As usual, the code is only valid for 1 week and will expire on Sunday 30th October.

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Quilt Shows

The Dublin Knitting & Stitching Show proved to be extremely popular, it was wonderful to meet you all that came along. We shared some wonderful stories and crafting ideas, and the show was a great success.

We have two more shows in November and we would love to meet you if you can make it along to either of the shows.

West Country Textile Show – 11th – 13th November

Harrogate Knitting & Stitching Show – 24th – 27th November

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Printology is so popular we are doing it twice! But only spaces now for October.

Our February Course is now full!

As we expected, our Printology Workshop proved to be very popular and we filled the February course in just over 1 month. We sort of guessed that this would be the case which is why we have already organised a second workshop for October next year.

The second course is going to run from 26th – 29th October 2017 and we are now taking deposits so you can reserve your place on the workshop. If you want a place on the October workshop act quickly to grab your space.

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Come and See me at a Quilt Show for FREE!

We have a couple of tickets left for the West Country Quilt & Textile Show. The tickets are for Sunday 13th November and the show is at the University of the West of England Exhibition Centre. We also have some free tickets for the Dublin Knitting and Stitching Show as well, which is at the end of this month

If you would like a ticket for either of these shows all you need to do is purchase anything from our website and add a line in the note box that you would like a ticket and we will send it out with the items you purchased. I am afraid this will have to be a first come, first served offer, so they are gone the offer will be over. If you are one of the lucky ones though, I look forward to seeing you there!

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October Deal of the Month

Christmas is coming!

I know, I know, we are only just into October and the sun is still shining, but I have seen some Christmas adverts and the shopping channels are already mentioning it, so I don’t feel too bad about reminding you all that Christmas is not that far away. For us crafters, we have top be even more organised if we are going to produce home-crafted gifts and cards for our friends and family. I was talking with one of our club members who is already preparing her designs for gifts, and she told me about her 6 year old grandson who loves joining in with when when she block prints and is going to make gifts himself for all his teachers this year.

So, now we have all agreed that Christmas is on its way, what is the special offer?

Well, we thought we would give you the chance to combine our beautiful Christmas blocks with something you can print on and give as a gift. Buy any one of our Christmas Block sets and you will get a free tea towel to block print and create a lovely festive gift. The deal gets better though as if you buy two of the Christmas sets, you will get 3 free tea towels and buy three sets and get 5 free tea towels. No code or comment to make when you order, just choose your sets and we will do the rest.
1 Christmas Block Set – 1 Free Tea Towel
2 Christmas Block Sets – 3 Free Tea Towels
3 Christmas Block Sets – 5 Free Tea Towels

To see the choice of block sets for this offer you can visit our October Offer page.

It is a great deal and I am sure anybody who receives a hand printed tea towel will love it.

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Learn how to Paint on Silk

Learn the art of silk painting and how silk is spun by silk worms, in these wonderful videos. You will love learning about the fascinating production, followed by the gorgeous silk fabric that are produced. Check out our full range of silk painting supplies and create what you are able to see in these videos.

If this has piqued your interest in painting on silk, then check out all of the kits and accessories we have on our Silk Painting page.

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Fabric Paints

Gelli Plates

Gift Vouchers

Stencils

Learn, Create, Be Happy!

kind regards

Jamie Malden
Colouricious

Create your own Fabric Designs

Textile Workshop Holiday

Our textile workshop holiday tour to southern India will take you to an amazing range of locations where you will get to learn all about textile design and production. From embroidery to silk weaving this trip is a must for every textile enthusiast.

The textile workshop holiday tour takes you across Southern India to some of the hot spots of Indian fabric productions, and you will even get the chance to go on a block printing workshop. As well as seeing the amazing array of fabrics and printing techniques in southern India you will be able to go to Shore temple, on our own Mahabalipuram tour! This will let you into another fabulous and beautiful part of Indian culture.

Colouricious textile tour route

Textiles are very important in southern Indian culture, textiles are considered to be one of the highest form of art and spiritual expression. The knowledge and skills required to create these textiles have been passed down through generations. This tour provides opportunity to explore and experience various kind of textile weaving and handicrafts. 

You will love our Colouricious textile tour to Southern India to see weaving up close! Everyone who loves textile art will love this textile tour!

Have a look at our other textile tours, perfect for everyone who is in love with arts and crafts!

Textile workshop holiday

Altered Textile Art – Fabric for Quilting

                                                                          

 

Would you like to create your own quilt ? You can design your fabric by using Colouricious fabric paint and wooden printing blocks for this project.

For more ars and crafts ideas, join the Colouricious Club.

Altered Textile Art - Fabric for Quilting