Keeping Cool in The Summer – Without an AC!

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A Holistic, All-Natural Guide by Rhituparna Mitra

The tropical Indian summer is here, and it’s the perfect time to adopt eco-conscious summer practices from knowledge that lies in our cultural plethora Ayurvedic and slow living regimes! Isn’t it amusing how we sit inside our air conditioned rooms, ironically berating climate change, all the while knowing that our extensive carbon emission is the very cause of our discomfort?

Rhituparna Mitra is an eco-conscious maven and a passionate environmentalist who leads a … Read Full

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Kantha – Embroidery from the cradle to the grave!

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We’ve all encountered a kantha – be it saree, dupatta, suit, cushion or blanket. But a little known fact that differentiate’s this eastern Indian tradition from several other embroidery crafts is that there lies a profound functionality behind it, for it was in it’s truest essence a craft tradition of the poor. Discarded textile scraps sewn together with a running stitch – the basic foundational block of needlework – to create something new. One of India’s oldest embroidery traditions, the … Read Full

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2/100 – Traditional Chikankari Saree, Stitches & More

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A drape from my mother’s closet, this delicate white on black features lucknowi chikankari work – how beautiful a process to imagine, that these delicate motifs were worked on at the back of the sheer georgette to reveal the design on the front face of the fabric with absolute finesse. Here’s a closer look at the detail and stitches used;

I’m going to be talking about two traditional chikan work stitch styles seen in this saree, so here goes…

  1. Jali
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