Saree Embroidery - 7 - Kantha Bengali embroidery #2

In the pile of my Kantha embroidered sarees, here is the second one where my embroidery has taken up the length of the entire saree.  The saree is a light beige-colored silk one which lends itself well to highlight the whole design repeating itself all over.

An overview of my saree embroidered in Kantha style

The only stitch used here in my saree was the running stitch used to fill in the motifs, which are also outlined with running stitch to demarcate the various shapes.  The colors used for the embroidery were pink, blue and orange for the flowers, green for the leaves and dark brown for the stems.

Closeup of the embroidery on my saree

A view of my entire saree filled up with the same embroidery motif

Kantha embroidery is a traditional style of Indian embroidery from West Bengal, and was essentially used to stitch together old clothing into layers to form quilts. Therefore, most of the motifs in this style are flowers, birds and animals.

The stitches too are quite simple, and one can learn them easily and adapt them to a variety of designs to suit individual creativity.


Nowadays, kantha-embroidered sarees especially on silk are very popular and the most common colors are in shades of whites to browns.
Read more here>> and here>>

This picture is from the Katna's Kantha website, highlighting the various Kantha motifs used traditionally.  The website also has photos of the entire process of making the kantha sarees etc.

Chitra's blog also has a big list of the various stitches she has used in Kantha, to achieve different effects.

Here is a beautiful Picasa web album on the many variants of Kantha embroidery on sarees..