Saree embroidery 12 - Kutchwork peacocks

Hello readers,

I had earlier blogged about Kutchwork- also known as Sindhi embroidery in India, and resembling Armenian embroidery, on sarees and more recently on cushions.

I wanted to share pictures of this lovely embroidery done by my aunt, Smt. Ranganayaki, an expert crafter with many beautiful creations in her basket. This saree is of maroon-colored pure handloom silk, and she has sewn in peacocks and squares as intermittent motifs and borders, using white and pale rose colored silk embroidery threads.

Here is the saree pallu with lots of these motifs embroidered at regular intervals.
Here is a closeup of the stylized peacock motif.

The edges are done in small chain stitches, with the pale rose colored thread.

The kutchwork squares and borders are done in white colored thread.

The plant stems too are done with chain stitch with the pale rose colored thread.


This is a closeup of the lower edge border, which includes basic kutchwork squares with the pale rose colored thread, interspersed with backstitch in white.
This picture is of the extreme edge border of the saree pallu, where you can notice kutchwork squares and borders set in a semi-almond shape motif.

Both rose and white colored threads have been used.  The edges are in rose colored chain stitches.
 A closeup of the 4x4 squares motif on the pallu shows how the individual squares have been worked in white, and separated with back stitch in rose color.
The rest of the saree has not been left blank.  Instead the border continues throughout the lower edge of the saree.  The body of the saree has long columns of small squares in white as shown here.

Please feel free to leave your comments on this post, and try it out yourself!

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