Kantha on white tunic

I had these  white[a creamy white, really!]  cotton fabric and  a  blue  cotton fabric with a small zari border  .

I wanted to mix and match these two with a fully embroidered yoke.

Then, for the design-it was traditional floral pattern, with borders.

 then the final thing -the embroidery itself- for this the choice  was ‘Kantha’ work, thought it would be easy to fill with running stitches .

How wrong I was! Though the stitching was a breeze, it really  took a long time to finish this tunic,including the sleeves.

 I used light and medium shades of this turqoise blue, here and there I also used blue silk thread.

pattern outlined-

Kantha tunic- outline

This is the closeup of the embroidery-

kantha tunic-closeup

Now for the finished tunic, the blue zari border is used in sleeves and the slit over the sides-

kantha tunic-3

 

The other sleeve is not seen here, but it is there!

Iam so very fond of this blue colour, and tend to use this wherever possible, hope  will be content  now, having  used it fully on this white[?] tunic.

Another small piece of unnecessary information- the tailor stitched the sleeve patterns upside down, I still can’t fathom why?

 

Marroon tunic

I was in India till last week.went there for a wedding.So I didn’t have time to work on my needlework challenge, now that this feeble excuse is out of my chest, I’ll start with the details of this tunic-

This is a  rebirth for this tunic, In its previous life[ if  I can call it that!], it was a dupatta[swawl, stole].It lost its purpose, so now it is reborn as a tunic.

The fabric is mangalagiri cotton in marroon[ deep red].For sleeves and yoke, two different printed  cottons are used.The yoke and the salwar is the same , the sleeves are different[my tailor was hesitant to attach this fabric for sleeves, but I insisted] and Iam happy with it.The usual mangalagiri zari border is sewn on the sides. now for the tunic-

Marron mangalagiri tunic-1

I used antique sequins  and Anchor cotton skein # 386  for kutch work.The pattern was drawn  in freehand, keeping in line with the neck seam[?] this took awhile,since symmetry was important. after finishing the kutchwork, the sequins were attached. later I added a running stitch outline over the paisleys on the yoke, with randomly placed sequins.

The yoke fabric is ‘kadi’ print- the gold effect keeps vanishing with each wash, so the running stitch outline seems like a good idea now!

 

Marroon tunic.

This tunic is dark red  woven silk.The colour is quite bright.I used bright yellow for the yoke. WRONG idea! They clash with each other.I added beads too.All these things did not occur to me while I was working, but it was bright enough[even for me] to understand. the tunic-

Maroon tunic-1

Now we”ll see the close up  of this yoke-

maroon tunic-2

The stitches used are – chain stitch, coral st, back st, Straight st.