#74: A City A Story Photo Weekly Contest #18 - Some Embroideries Done By Me

India is a country famous for it's handloom and embroidery. Every state here has it's own unique style when it comes to stitching and hand embroidery - Aari, Banjara, Chikan, Kantha, Gotha, Pipli etc. Designs in Indian embroidery are formed on the basis of the texture and the design of the fabric and the stitches. Sarees, shawls, sandals, bedsheets, curtains, jewelry - everything can be found here hand-made right from scratch.

I've been to an all-girls convent school(Mt. Carmel) in my hometown Dhanbad. In my school, SUPW(Socially Useful Productive Work) was a mandatory subject. As kids we learnt a lot about various paintings and origami. But as we grew older(high school onwards) the syllabus moved to embroidery. Every year we were given a new assignment to complete : Table Cloth, Pillow Covers, Sofa Covers, Clothes for babies, Curtains, Bedsheets!

Today when I came across the contest by @aaronli (Theme: Art & Craft), I realized that it's the perfect time to share some of my work here. Now, keep in mind that the below items were embroidered by a teenage girl who was just looking to finish her work before the given deadline. Don't expect perfection :D

* Pillow Cover :

This was my very first assignment. We were asked to buy a pair of plain pillow covers and then do embroidery on them. We had learnt a lot of stitches : Herringbone, Chain, Buttonhole, Zigzag, Cross etc. I've used stem to stitch the lines, filling for the leaves and buttonhole stitch for the petals.

* Table Cloth :

This was given to us in the next year. There were certain rules which were laid for this particular assignment. Everyone was given the same design to trace on the piece of cloth using carbon paper. The judgement criteria was not the creativity this year but the perfection and fineness with which the student completes the entire embroidery. To make this I'd used only filling stitch but I'd used only one thread (usually 2-3 lines of thread are used at a time to stitch to make it look bolder).

* Sofa Cover :

That's right! I had to embroider a sofa cover. Not just one though. It was supposed to be made for a 3-1-1 sofa set! This was the lengthiest assignment by far and took us almost 1 full year to complete. The stitches that I used for it were : knot, stem, herringbone filling and filling.

I remember grumbling to complete these assignments back then. But now when I look back, I'm glad that our teachers taught us something so unique and beautiful. I do hope you guys liked my work. Thanks for reading.

Cheers!

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Type: Embroidery
Camera: Vivo V5 Plus
Location: Dhanbad, India