KakeI’ve been interested in kantha (a Bengali embroidery/quilting method) for a while now, but it wasn’t until I came across Ekta Kaul’s book “Kantha: Sustainable Textiles and Mindful Making” that I really started to understand it. I knew that the popular understanding of it as “lines of large running stitches” was an oversimplification, but I found it hard to grasp the more academic/reference-style material that I was able to find. Ekta Kaul’s book really clarified it all for me.
So I did some. This is one side of a cushion cover — the other side (not yet started) will be more linear, with stripes of different kantha border patterns. I designed the layout below on the basis of guidelines in Ekta Kaul’s book, and the stitch choices were inspired by that book as well as “The Art of Kantha Embroidery” by Niaz Zaman and “Bangladesh Kantha Art in the Indo-Gangetic Matrix” by Perveen Ahmad (both of which I’d come across before but found a bit confusing until I’d read Ekta Kaul’s explanations).
As I understand it (I might be wrong), traditional kantha would not use this many different stitches — I took my choices from a bunch of different kantha styles, because I wanted to try them all out. Also, I think traditional kantha would have filled up more of the “empty” space with different motifs, but I didn’t want to over-do it on my first try.
Anyway. Photo is below. I’ll put some in-progress photos and details of the fabric in another post.
Karin
KarinWanderer
Alex is catching up on sleep