Knotted Buttonhole Stitch-1

TAST-2012-Week39-Knotted Buttonhole Stitch

This week Sharon has announced the Knotted Buttonhole Stitch in the TAST challenge. Please visit her site to know more about it:

http://pintangle.com/2012/09/25/take-a-stitch-tuesday-week-39-2/

My previous work of this stitch are:

I will try to work some more. But with renovation work going on in my home, it is difficult to do any thing...still I will give it a try......so please watch my blog.....

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Stitch Guidance

Some of my friends who are beginners in hand embroidery, wanted me to post how to stitch the basic embroidery stitches. So for all those beginners and those who want to refer to the basic embroidery stitches, I will be posting step by step instructions on the hand embroidery stitches under this title. 

I hope it will be helpful to all of you. Please do mail me if the instructions are not clear or you are not able to follow them.

Oh by the way I will be starting my Free Patterns again. It is just that I need to ink my sketches, as those drawn with pencil may not give a good print out. 

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Rangoli-207

21 to 1 dots.

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The Brown Butterfly

I think this is the butterfly which came out of the chrysalis I was talking about in my previous post. It was perched on one of the plants late in the evening. The sky was heavily clouded, sultry and about to rain. The light was not really good. But I managed to take the above picture.

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Ganesh Chaturthi Greetings

May Lord Ganesha bless us all and samastha lokaas with Health, Wealth, Happiness, Prosperity, Success, Wisdom and Peace. Happy Ganesh Chaturthi to all all of you my friends......

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Birth of a Beauty

Hi friends. Today early in  the morning, when I was strolling in my little garden, I came across this beautiful moment:

A butterfly coming out of its chrysalis. It has still its legs attached to the chrysalis. I immediately rushed inside got my camera and took this pic. Isn't this beautiful? I don't know much about the butterflies except that everyone loves when one sees it flying around.

I am happy that my little garden attracts many butterflies, birds and other insects. In this area where I live, people don't leave even a few inches around their homes, let alone plant trees or even shrubs. To me a house without greenery around it is really difficult to think about.  So, the birds, insects or other living things don't have a place to visit other than the parks which are also dwindling day by day in the name of development.

I feel so happy when I see the parrots or other birds visiting my garden for the fruits, or butterflies for the flowers. I place some bird feed and water too when ever I can but invariably in summers. It is really satisfying to know that I can give back a little to the Nature when I am taking so much from it.... 

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Rangoli-206

Ganesh Chaturthi Special-Floral Canopy

21 dots 7 rows, 19, 17, 15...to 7 dots.

Watch out for more......

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Rangoli-205

Ganesh Chaturthi Special

Here is one more Rangoli: 

23 to 1 straight dots.

Swatikas, holy lamps and most of all modaks and laddus for Lord Ganesha. He loves, Modaks(preparation from rice flour) Laddus(a dessert). So what are you waiting for ? 

Watch out for more rangolis.....

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Rangoli-204

Ganesh Chaturthi Special

We are celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi on 19th of this month. Lord Ganesha-The Elephant God is one of my favorite. He is loved by children a lot. He is worshiped by children for success in education, business man for success in business, farmers for good crop before sowing. In fact He is worshiped before starting of any venture or auspicious occasion as he is the Lord who removes all obstacles and grants us success. His consorts are Sidhi (meaning accomplishment, success, perfection or spiritual power), Budhi (meaning Wisdom or intellect) and Riddhi (meaning prosperity). A man requires all these three things for a happy and peaceful life on this earth. So by worshiping Lord Ganesha one would get all these three things.

This is one festival, which I enjoy a lot since as a child. He is one God who is worshiped with 21 types of herbs which includes grass as well. He is one God who is like a child -easy to please with offering of a little jaggery, but blesses us with lots of good things. That is why He is one of my Favorite God. 

Well I am going to post some Rangolis for this special occasion in this and coming posts. 

Swastika is a symbol which denotes auspiciousness and is associated with Lord Ganesh. So I have used this symbol in my Rangoli.

19 dots three rows then 17, 15...till 3. Join as shown. This is very easy to draw. 

Watch out for my next posts too.......

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Rangoli-203

This is another simple design. 16 dots-2 rows, 14, 12....till 2. Join as shown.

This can be used for all poojas for placing the kalash or the idol or the God's photo. So try it for Ganesh Chaturthi.

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Threshold Art-4

My previous posts on the subject are here:

http://summersofindia.blogspot.in/search/label/Threshold%20Art

Here is a picture of the doorway sent by Ranjana Shankar:

It looks quite old. The massive doorway, the fine carving on it prove that. It would be made of teak I think. It is really beautiful. 
I remember, that in my childhood I use to see such beautifully made doors, very huge and highly carved. The carvings could be that of Ganesha(elephant God), Lakshmi(Goddess of wealth), or elephants, peacocks etc. The most common  would be floral vines, lotuses etc.

The rich, landlords, or the business community would have their homes full of such beautiful doors,doorways, windows, cupboards, furniture and four poster beds.

Now a days except for the rich, one cannot afford such beautiful things.

Thank you Ranjana for sharing it with us. 

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Rangoli-202

16 dots 2 rows, 14, 12..... to 2.

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Rangoli-201

Floral Canopy

20 dots, two rows, then 18, 16....till 2. Join as shown 

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Your Contributions

Hi friends. I have been getting queries as to how send your contributions to me. It is very simple. All you have to do is take a photograph of your work (if it is embroidery or embroidery designs, crafts etc) and mail it to me at the mail id given below. If you can add how you have made the craft or what embroidery stitches you have used, or a tutorial like step by step explanation it would be really nice. 

If it is Rangoli, then draw it clearly on a paper (with dots clearly visible), colour it if you like or even other wise it is ok. Now you take a photo graph and mail me to my email id.

summersofindia@gmail.com

All of them will be published under your name only. But please send your original creations. No copies or downloads of others work. 

Please do send your contributions. I am eagerly waiting for them.

Some of the queries I am receiving have no reply blogger. In such cases, I can answer some through my blog. But there are some which I cannot cannot answer publicly. So please send me an email on to the above id,  so that I can answer you through email. Please don't leave your email ids in the comments if you don't want it to be publicly displayed. 

And also please bear with me if I cannot answer you immediately. I am sometimes in places where I don't have access to internet. So it takes time.

Please leave your, suggestions, and criticisms so that I can improve my self and share with you all what ever little knowledge I have. 

Thanks a lot Soniya. Hope this answers your query.

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Bindi-The Forehead Art

Part-7

Here are some more designs with liquid Bindi.

Hope you like them. Some more in my next posts....Keep watching....

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Rangoli-200

Well here I am celebrating my 200th post of Rangoli. So I will take a little of your time to say a few words.

When I started this topic, I had many ideas, many things to share with you all. But I never knew that I could post so many Rangolis. I have collected and created so many designs since my childhood. But usually they are all on scraps of papers and copied or jotted down in a hurry on the back of some paper. Some of them or cuttings from news papers and magazines. Some are from my gran's and my mom's note books which are in a very tattered condition.

I always wanted to note them down properly so that I can maintain an album. I never got to it, until I started posting them on my blog. Now I am slowly, redoing them, storing on paper and also in photographs. 

I also wanted to share with you so many techniques of drawing and colouring, aids which help in drawing of these Rangolis, various materials used etc. In my coming posts I will try to post about them.

I am so happy and thank you all my friends and visitors who visit my blog, take time to point out so many things, leave comments, messages and appreciate my work, which encourage and motivate me to post more and more. With out your encouragement, I would not have reached this mile stone. I hope you will keep on leaving your comments and suggestions so that I can do much better and keep on posting more designs. I want all of you, whether you are a novice, or a beginner, or an expert in this art, to enjoy my posts and find my designs useful.

This is an ancient art slowly fading away. I just want to do what ever I can (which is very little) to keep it alive so that the next generations would also know about it and continue it as we all are....

I will also be grateful to anyone who can send me about the history of this art, its significance, iconic significance,  old and ritualistic designs along with why and how they are used, or information on any books on the subject(especially old ones) and where they are available as I am collecting all the information on this art. Please do help me.

Thanks a lot to all of you for supporting me and encouraging me....

Here is my Rangoli

24 dots 8 rows in the center, then 22, 20, 18...till 8 on either side. Join as shown.

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StitchXplorations-Lazy Daisy

This was done long back for a sampler. I have used Lazy Daisy stitch, Stem stitch and French Knots. The thread I used was tatting and crochet cotton threads and the fabric was unbleached hand woven cotton cloth.

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Rangoli-199

15 to 1 dots


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StitchXplorations...

The Intro

Every time I learn a stitch, I keep on practising it until, I get it right. It also sets a rhythm for that stitch, which makes it easy to stitch. I also doodle a lot, noting down my ideas or thoughts. Many a time it may be variations of same stitch or a combination of different stitches or different medias....sometime it results in creating something new on my own...

It is easy to execute these designs or ideas on cloth and save for future reference, instead of noting down in a book(it needs lots of notes and figs).

I will post such of my explorations of the stitches under this category....as my friends have been asking since long...So just keep watching.......

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