Beautiful Borders/Laces-3

Frilled Laces

Here is one more type of lace- frilled laces. These are very small in width and available in many colours, including, gold, silver, white, black and other shades. One variety is plain and simple, one has a line of gold or silver running in the middle as well on the edge and another type is mixture of colour and gold or silver.

They are being used for edging saris, dupattas(scarves/stoles) and also dresses. They are sold either as 9 meters bundle- the length required for a sari and blouse or by meter as required by us.

Here are some...

This one is yellow -bright colour with a silver line running through the middle and also on the edge.

 This one is gold

 This is silver

 This is green and gold

 This one is blue and silver-I love this one

 These are some colours put together

 White, yellow and pink with silver thread running through the lace.

This one is pinkish orange with gold.

You can see the elastic band at the bottom of the lace. This is stitched on to the underside of the cloth. I have stitched on one of these to my sari. I will post it shortly. these laces are not expensive and are quite popular these days. If you watch the soaps many an actress is wearing a sari that has been decorated with these laces. 

Why don't you try one of these?

Beautiful Borders/Laces-2

Velvet Laces

My previous post on this topic is here. 

http://summersofindia.blogspot.com/2010/08/beautiful-borderslaces-1.html

I have so much to show you in laces but did not have much time. OK now here is one more of the laces used as borders for saris, dresses and odhnis or chunris. These days we find a lot of variety. One of them is the velvet lace or velvet borders.  These are available in two or three widths. I think one inch to three inches. They are just plain and available in many colours. 

The laces are available in 9meter bundles, which is required for one sari and blouse. The wholesalers buy in huge quantities and package it like that. So we need not bother how much to buy for a sari. But some of them are also available  in lesser quantities, cut according to our requirements. 

Here is the plain pink one. they are available in such beautiful and unbelievable shades of, pinks, lilacs, black, cream, blues greens etc.This would look good as a border(edge) to plain contrast coloured sari -cream, black, blue shades or even printed one which coordinates well with this colour. 

Here are two laces- thinner in width and with gold stripes. They do look pretty. There are different shades available.

I heard that fringed laces in velvet are also available. But I have not yet come across any in my daily beat. But then it has been some time since I visited my suppliers. May be this week if I visit I will see what else is new in the market.

I bought these so that I can stitch on to some of my saris or dupattas or my niece's frocks. I dint buy the wider one.  One can use the thinner lace (same or different colours) on either side with some other lace in between as a border to sari. 

Well I have not found any suitable sari for these laces. But do have a look at these. Explore and enjoy. Just give it a thought. We can also use these on cushion covers or kitchen linen, kids clothes etc. But one thing is they may not stand heavy washes and wear and tear. Gentle hand wash in mild liquid soap or dry wash may be best. I have not tried to wash it yet. 

So ? How do you like them? do let me know please.

Blouses In Fashion-Benarasi-2

I have one Cotton sari- a very fine cotton, hand woven with zari border- a broader one at the bottom and a very thin line on the top for three fourths length and then broad border for the pallu. Its pallu is also very simple. But its colour is unusual. I loved it the moment I saw it. We call this as Kankambaram colour or Crossandra (flowers) colour.  

This is from a place called Venkatagiri in my state. That is why this is called as Venkatagiri sari. The place is famous for hand woven, very fine, cotton and Seiko(cotton and silk mixed) saris with thread or zari motifs.

I prefer hand looms as each piece is unique and beautiful as also natural.

Generally blouse in matching colour is worn with many saris. If it has a border in contrasting colour, blouse of that colour looks good. But here I did not want to wear a gold coloured blouse.

Wearing a matching blouse would have been perhaps too simple. So I searched for something different or unique. Then I saw this brocade blouse in contrasting colours.

This is the actual colour. In  the other pictures i could not get the colour right. This is the pallu with two zari stripes. At the bottom you can see the big border of zari.

This is the blouse I thought would be very beautiful with it. I am sorry I am not able to capture the real colours of the blouse or the sari  in these pictures. The blouse is shiny because of the silk thread. So getting it right was not possible. The blouse looks more brighter than what it appears here.

Have closer look. See the stripes in gold, red and purple-it is looking like blue here. See the different designs-flowers, paisley. 

So by choosing some thing a bit different we can make the entire dress very unique and different. Had I teamed this with ordinary same coloured blouse, it would have looked boring and monotonous. 

These blouses are available in different colours-single multi, stripes etc. you can team it up with plain saris. So why don't you try one?