Latest saree designed- with Jamini Roy paintings prints

Now a days digital prints on cloth is a trend. The digital prints are also used in latest designs of sarees. Even I wanted to design a saree with digital prints. Fortunately I found a cloth with prints of Shri Jamini Roy's paintings.
(Shri Jamini Roy was an Indian painted. He brought new style in paintings. He followed folk style. You can read more about Shri Jamini Roy and about his paintings here. )
Here is the cloth I found.Actually  this was a salwar top. I thought with this I can design a saree. It has prints of all the famous paintings of Shri Jamini Roy. Obviously the designer in me was very excited to design a saree with this cloth.

The saree has 4-5  main colors, I had confusion to select the saree color. Anyhow I had decided to use the printed cloth with print as saree border. Mango yellow color  is very prominent , so went ahead with that color as saree. Here is my selection of cloths, Mango yellow jute cotton, and blue and green for the borders:

 

As decided , used the printed cloth as border, cut the cloth into stripes, so that each stripe covers longest print :

And attached it on the border , and on the either side attached the Blue and Green cloth along it. Here is how the saree border looks:

And here is the saree designed, worn by my Chammak challo( I have named the mannequin as Chammak Challo :))

 And the printed cloth was left out, so designed a simple blouse with that.

I liked the final outcome of this design. Hope you also liked. Any other design you can suggest me with the same kind of cloths?

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

Dress design- Patchwork

After a long break , coming back to blogosphere. I could not work on any arts and craft project, because of my busy work schedule and my son's exam. My son's exam! Uff! felt like I was writing the exam .:-).

Now I could work on long pending work, design a dress with patchwork. I had bought the patches in an exhibition , and I was lucky to find exactly matching lace for those patches.

The cloth is Maroon Khadi silk, attached the lace on the border and patches on the middle. And some motifs around the patches.

Here it is:

 

Closer view of the patches and the lace:

 

 

I think , green bottom and duppata would look good on this . What do you say?

Now  working on an oil painting, soon share about that.

Until then,

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Theme Saree- At last my Deepavali saree is designed

This is what happens with me! For any occasion I wish to design a saree or dress, for that occasion, it will not be completed :-(. This is the saree, I wanted to design and wear on last Deepavali. But as usual could not.
It has screen printing, machine embroidery and Kalamkari patch work on it.
The cloth and the lace I bought are here:

The cloth is fine crepe. Liked the lace,it has unique design!Isn't it?

I wanted to design the saree with a theme. As the lace has design of pots on that, decided paint it with" lady bringing water in pot" design. In some handicraft shop I got Kalmakari and embroiderd patches of lady holding water pot. I had screen with motif of " lady holding pot" , design. Used all of these and the final outcome is below.

Stitched  both the laces  along the border and screen printed with the lady holding the pot design along it.And also attached antique Gold color chamkis in between.

Here is the closer view of the border:

The pallu has Kalamkari patches and embroidered patches along with antique Gold Chamkis:

Closer view of the patches:

 

The blouse is Khadi silk.

As it has earthy  color , I thought of Terracotta jewellery , but could not get proper one. So going ahead with Silver Jewellery with brown stones:

I don't have a mannequin to display the Saree. Trying to display it on the floor :-)

I've named this as theme Saree, since complete Saree is designed on a theme. This is liked by some of my friends, some of them have asked me to design theme Sarees for them.  Hope to design some more theme sarees. Hope they don't have to wait long for that!  :-)

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana

Patchwork - Diwan cover

Sriramapura , a place in Bangalore is also called "Chindi Bazar",("Chindi" in Kannada  means Rag) which is a heaven for cotton cloth lovers(buyers). Here cotton cloths are sold not by the length but by the  weight. So it works out cheaper.Sometimes I will take you there, through my post :-). I buy cotton cloths for quilts , from "Chindi Bazar". Recently when I visited this market I found a white cotton cloth with bold prints.

The print is very unique ,bird is feeding its younger ones and another bird is bringing food. I found it very attractive so bought the cloth. As per my knowledge about the fabric , its called Chintz (Cloth) print. 

We have a Diwan at home.  I thought of using the cloth to make a cover for the Diwan.Cut the cloth along the black border and made square pieces. Then stitched those on  a Orange color cotton cloth. Used Black and White , printed cloth as the border.

Closer view

Black and White combination goes well with any color. Isn't it?

Love , laugh and live the life to the fullest,

-Ranjana