How to transfer design on stitched dress-Tutorial

This is the query I often get from most my readers. For embroidery projects, transferring the design on fabric is the tedious task. One method is to use charcoal powder. Another is using white carbon paper. Though this method is easy, but for large designs,even this is time consuming.

Whatever the technique we use, transferring design on stitched garment is quite difficult , especially around neck area.

How to transfer the design:

My suggestion for embroidery on stitched fabric, avoid large or complex  designs.

This is the stitched salwar top I selected for embroidery:

The stitched dress I chose

I chose , simple Kutchwork design . I have these two designs in Kutchwark. Kutchwork designs are geometrical, something goes wrong with the design, that can be corrected. Both the designs I have are similar , I chose the first one:

Kutch design sheet

Place a book below the fabric where the design to be transferred.

Keep a book for support

 Now , place the carbon and the design , trace with a pencil or pen. Here is the design transferred on the fabric. There are some mistakes, which I can correct.

Kutchwork design transferred

Hope to complete the embroidery on this dress. I was away from hand embroidery for few months. Starting it again with this Kutch embroidery. You can view other Kutch embroidery I had worked earlier , shared in this post: Kutchwork on Salwar Top .

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Chikankari Sarees- from Lucknow

Lucknow - state capital of UttarPradesh,which is famous for its Moghal tradition, known as city of Nawabs, also famous for its chikankari embroidery. There may be very few who don't know about chikankari embroidery.

Origin of Chikankari:

It is a similar to schwalm embroidery (white work). The embroidery is made using white thread on white linen.Nowadays its is done using colored cloths with color threads. Chikan is derived from Persian word Chikin meaning cloths made with needlework. This was originally introduced by Mughal empress Noorjahan.

The motifs in chikankari are majorly flowers, paisley designs , vine designs etc.

Motifs used in chikankari

 Types of stitches:

Chikankari is said to consists of  40 types of different stitches. Among them a very commonly used is tepchi -running stitch. Other few commonly used stitches are Phanda-small circular dot, Jaali - which forms a type of net, murri- knotted stitch,  and bakhia - which is similar to herringbone stitch, used for shadow effect.

Chikankari Sarees: 

Chikankari embroidery has been  influencing fashion industry from ages. Earlier it was a court craft, which were practised in Kolkata, Bangladesh, Delhi, Gaya , Varanasi etc. It is used by most of the designers now, may be it is a kurti, salwar kameez or a saree. 

There are many varieties in Chikankari sarees available. Chikankari sarees are normally in light or pastel shade, and the cloth is fine muslin, cotton, organdy , Georgette etc.

 

 Here is one such saree in light green color and paisley designs

Another is in  lavender color with paisley and florsl design all over:

 Nowadays many  have worked with dark colors like black, blue and red etc. Here is chikankari saree in black and white combination:

In 1980 , the Bhakia stitch which gives shadow effect, dominated and traders flooded the markets with coarsely embroidered chikankari sarees and dresses. Many handicraft organizations worked to bring back the intricate and fine designs involving stitches like murri, phanda, jaali etc. This has improved the quality of the embroidery. This also made chikankari  enter into international fashion market, thereby improving the livelihoods of crafts-persons.

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

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Saree blouse design- Kamalkari embroidery

For me always saree is the most beautiful outfit. Saree coupled with properly designed blouse will make saree look more attractive. Nowadays there are several saree blouse patterns available. Normally the saree blouse is designed with either with embroidery, painting on back neckline etc.
I designed this blouse for the Dakkai Jamdani saree , I have.
The saree has geometrical and floral design weaving on it, with black background. I thought of embroidering geometrical designs on the back neckline.

Here is the saree:

As it has floral designs also, then changed my decision to combine both geometrical and floral design. The best one is Kamalkari embroidery, which looks like geometrical flowers :)
 Then what else can stop, just traced the design along back neckline and embroidered with Kamalkari. This took very less time, as Kamalkari threads are thick and filling is easier.
Here is the completed design:

Closer view of the embroidery:

Kamalkari embroidery can also be used for dresses and Kurtis.Its very easy to embroider with Kamalkari. Will share tutorial and some more designs in coming posts.

Until then,

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Cutwork - An embroidery which needs lots of patience

Its always embroidery that I like the most in all arts and crafts. But it needs lot of patience. Now embroidery machines are used. As I know, with the machine only few kinds of the embroidery stitches can be made. Cutwork is included in the list of embroidery stitches which can be made using machine. Though it can be made using machine, it needs lots o patience and skill.
Cutwork originated from Italy and migrated to other parts of the world. Hand cutowrk is the traditional way of doing cutwork. Here the embroidery is done on the edges of the design and the inside fabric is cut away. Though I had learnt hand cutwork as well as machine cutowrk, I could not make any remarkable work in cutwork.
I could find the hand cutwork piece with Late Smt Manjula, who was an expert in all kinds of hand embroidery and crafts. Here are cutowrk she made:

 This is an elephant design, with cutwork done around the elephant design. Here is the closer view:

 Complete work is hand cutowork, really hats off to her patience.

Modern technique uses laser cutowrk, in which the designs can be made very precisely.
There are many forms in cutwork, about which Im collecting the details. Soon will share about different forms of cutworks.

 

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Banjara Embroidery- unique combination of patchwork, mirror work with embroidery

When it comes to craft, my favorite is always embroidery, hand or machine embroidery. I really love the way the threads fills the cloth with the colors. Nowadays , because of time constraints not able to work on any of my embroidery projects. Especially hand embroidery requires lot of time and patience.Sometimes its very tedious, and if the threads knot with one another,Uff! it really makes one to loose patience . So I wonder when I see the hand embroidery made on the entire  cloth or dress. One such , embroidery is Banjara embroidery. Here is a bag with Banjara Embroidery:

Banjara embroidery is very fine embroidery  combined with patchwork, applique work and mirror work. And also the work is decorated by cowrie shells. Here is the closer look :

This is made by  artist  Late . Smt. Manjula,I have  written about her in   my   posts ,

3rd anniversary of my blog

Cute... cuter....cutest dolls .  

and 

Lets enter the world of craft- Wire handbags made by Smt. Manjula

 Banjara embroidery is traditional embroideries by semi-nomadic community called Banjara or Lambani.  In earlier days women of Banjara community used to wear these kind of heavily embroidered costumes:

The top(Blouse)

 Embroidered Long Skirt:

And the veil :

Late Smt.Manjula with the costume she embroidered.

In Banjara Embroidery , majorly used stitches are Chain stitch, herringbone stitch , cross stitch, chevron stitch and mirror work.  Below image shows the different embroideries: 

 Embellishments made of silver and gold were used in earlier days,now the fancy artificial embellishments are used. Here the embroidery with silver color embellishments:

Embroidered waist belt with mirror work :

 

   One more specialty of Banjara Embroidery is, the cowrie shells are used to decorate the embroidery, like this one:

  

All the above works are made by Late. Smt. Manjula. She was an expert in almost all arts and crafts. Here is a cute doll decorated with Banjara costume, by her:

 Banjara embroidery is very colorful embroidery combined with mirror work, patchwork and embellishments. Now many Banjara women are using this embroidery on different kinds of products for sale. This is also supported by Government organizations too.

Planning to design a dress or saree with Banjara embroidery. Hope I will complete that soon and share with you.

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Saree with net border and pallu

This is a saree a designed with net material and running Orange synthetic material.As net material is very thin , I attached the net as border and Pallu on the saree.

In between attached Chamkis 

The blouse is also same net material:

And now the saree with the Matching jewelry 

This I had designed when net material was in fashion. Now slowly net material is going out of fashion. So kept it, when fashion cycle revolve, these might again come back!

Until then,

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Kalamkari Patchwork on a Saree

In previous post I had mentioned to share about the Kalamkari patch work made on a saree.
Kalamkari is technique of painting on cloth with vegetable dyes. You can find out more about Kalamkari Paintings in this link.
Now these Kalamkari patches are used for dress design and saree design. I had bought some Kalamkari patches , in a Craft exhibition. It was in my stash for long time. Then bought a saree to attach the Patches. It took more than 6 months for me to complete the work.
There is a big Paisley design Patch and 18 small patches. I attached the small patches on the border :

And the big motif on the shoulder:

Some more motifs on the Pallu:

Closer view of the motifs:

 

    
I have not used any embellishment on this. Because I wanted to highlight the Kalamkari painting.
Blouse is also Kalamkari cloth in Maroon color.

Planning to use small Paisley motifs on the blouse.

Once blouse is designed, will share the photos. 

In between Screen printed on 3-4 sarees, and this time in vacation visited 2-3 temples. So many crafty experience to share with you!

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Inheritance

This is the best cross stitch work I have seen. No, I have not made this. To make this kind of piece, will take at least 10 years for me. :-). My mother made this. Few years back, she had been to Chandigarh, to stay few months with my sister. She got this design from neighbor and started this work. She worked at least 2-3 years on this. This is really a large design, measuring 1 meter X 3/4 meter.
She gifted this to her sister (my aunt).
This is a complete cross stitch work, means even the red background is filled with cross stitch. So you can imagine the amount of work involved.
I had seen her working on this. Though she used to have , household work, she never got bored of this work. After finishing her household work, she was to open the materials  and start working. Whenever she used to travel, she was to carry this with her :-). I always used to tease her saying she would never finish this work. :-). Hundreds of Anchor embroidery skeins are used for this. Once she fell short of the red skeins and  asked  me to send some skeins. I forgot the number of the color and I thought its red so, sent some red color skeins. She filled some part of the design with the skeins I sent. After some filling was done, she realized that was not the exact color. The difference was negligible. But she removed all those, and again filled with the exact color skein. Perfection! She always used to tell us, "If you start any work, do it properly and complete it, never leave it unfinished". And also "If you are giving food to anybody, take care that the person's hunger is satiated, otherwise don't give".

One more view of the cross stitch work:

Since many days I wanted to share about this. But,I didn't have the photos of this. This is in my Aunt's house, so I requested my cousin to send the photos. I think these photos have not done justification to  the work. It looks too good, like a painting. That’s why I say this is the best cross stitch work I have seen.

She is making one more like this to give to my brother. Hats off, to her enthusiasm. I always think my passion towards arts and craft is inherited from her. Isn't it?