Rangoli-9

The beauty of this art lies in the placement of the dots, drawing of even and thin lines, choosing the right colours to fill up and last but not least lots of patience. 

Care should be taken to clean and wash/wipe the area first. In our villages and town, cow dung mixed with water is sprinkled and allowed to dry. This not only helps in preventing the dust or loose soil to blow out into the house, but also gives a thick olive green back drop for the design. The design drawn with the white lime stone powder or the rice powder stands out beautifully on the surface.

The basic requirement for a beautiful Rangoli is the placement of dots. They should be evenly placed in each row and rows should also be spaced evenly. The main row; the row which contains the maximum number of dots forms the central lines. The dots in this row are placed first and in the center of the area where the design needs to be drawn. Then the  subsequent rows of dots are placed on either side of the main row.

Here are some more designs for you...

 

 
 

  

 Hope you like them. Some more designs next time.....

Visitor in my garden

Friends today early in the morning I had a beautiful visitor in my garden. A pretty little Butterfly. It was sunning its wings and then drinking water. So I clicked.....

 

  

  

 I love it when these pretty ones visit my garden. At least me garden is providing food and shelter to some lives.....

My Embroideries

I wanted to share with you one of my works, hand embroidery on a sari.The sari is Bengal cotton cream (off white) with a red border. This is the traditional one from Bengal. I love the combination and every few years replenish my wardrobe with at least two three saris with the same combination but different designs.

This sari I brought it at least five years ago and my hands itched after looking at the plain sari. LOL!. I started with the pallu. I used feather stitch with detached chain. I used to stitch only for a few minutes every night after a very hectic schedule. I used to be so very tired after long hours at the computer. So it took long to finish this simple design. I wanted to do the design in slant stripes through out the sari. But did not have the guts to take it up.

Any way here are the pictures. Well its not a master piece. I know. But it filled all my lonely and agonised moments when I was living away from my family all alone, counting days, hours minutes and seconds to come back. I could some what divert myself from the loneliness.

This was how the pallu was embroidered. I always start with the pallu, so that if I complete the design at least I have the pallu with the embroidery. The rest I may or may not embroider.

 

I have used the same colours of cream and red. But God! it was very difficult to obtain the correct shades which match the colours on the sari. I used feather stitch with detached chain. I used the colours alternately. That is cream coloured feather stitches with red detached chain and vice verse. I was inspired by the wheat fields fully ripe which I happened to see on my outings, before I started my embroidery.

 

 

 Here is a close shot. I used the Holbein stitch at the center.

 

 Close shots of my work on the pallu

 

 

 

 

The rest of sari looks like this.I could not embroider it further. I just wanted to do a slanting stripes all over.

 Hope you like it.....