Hand Embroidery

Have you ever picked up something with thread work on it and flipped it over to see the back?

The back of hand embroidery is where it tells the truth. Slightly messy, honest, nothing hidden, the track of a needle through fabric, directed by a hand that knew precisely what it was doing. Ran your fingertips across it. It was the sort of texture that slowed you down, without your knowing why. What you were feeling was craft. Real, human, irreplaceable craft. And it has a history longer and richer than most of us were ever taught to look for.

Stitches across India

A country this large does not have one embroidery tradition. There are hundreds of them, spread out over many different states, communities, languages, and generations of skilled artisans that primarily travelled by hand and word of mouth rather. We couldn’t carry all of it. So we picked some stitches, the ones that are common, spanning states and ages. Ten distinct hand stitching methods that are present in all regions of India.

And even among these few stitches, nothing is straightforward. The same stitch, under one name in one state is under another in another, stitched in various colours, on a different cloth, as part of a completely separate tradition. Some of the crafts you already know are built almost entirely from one or two of these stitches, repeated and mastered until they

become something that looks like its own world. Others combine several techniques in a single piece, layering one stitch over another until the surface tells more than one story at once. Change the fabric and the stitch changes character. The stitch itself is just the beginning.