Kantha Quilting or Embroidery

I have been working a sample of Kantha quilting for my course and it has been quite time consuming as it is primarily lots of running stitches worked closely together on layers of cloth.

Kantha quilting originates from West Bengal and Bangladesh.  It was a leisure activity for the women who used worn out saris layered together and decorated with embroidered motifs and running stitches.

 The word Kantha means woven, or Kanthas means rags.  The layers were piled together and stitched into all kinds of different useful things such as quilts, blankets, bags, shawls, cushions and so on.

The women would pull threads from the border of their saris to use for the embroidery.  Many motifs were used often depicting their daily life but also animals, geometric and floral images.

The running stitches around these motifs can create ripples or ridges.  When the stitches are aligned in rows this is called 'Jod' and when random or non-aligned this is called 'Bejod'  These different ways of working the running stitches create different ripples in the work.

There are many images of Kantha work on the internet and some of it is exceptionally beautiful and interesting. Nowadays articles are made to appeal to tourists.

The way I did it:  I used a lotus flower motif and lotus flower leaves.  I am trying to depict these floating on water.  After sketching out the motifs I transferred them to a freezer paper template which could be ironed on to the fabric (3 layers) and drawn around with a pencil. 

Note I wasn't aiming for an artistic elegance here but a means of demonstrating the Kantha stitches.

I worked the outline of the motifs with stem stitch as this is how it was done originally, and finished with some simple embroidery inside the motifs, using only running stitches.

The Kantha stitches are worked with two strands of stranded cotton embroidery thread through the wadding sandwich and I found this quite hard on my fingers as time went on.

I outlined five sections with light pencil and then went over the lines with running stitches.  These blocks would have the stitches worked in different directions so that the ripples would move in different directions.

You may be able to see from the photos that I started out trying to line up the stitches evenly and the same size but this was quite difficult and the stitches were getting larger than I wanted.  When stitches are paired and aligned like this it is called 'Jod'.

I changed then to doing rows of small stitches the same distance apart but in a more random way and this non-aligned method is called 'Bejod'.  (Just thought you'd like to know that!!)

I found this more controllable and less demanding in time and concentration.

The work needs to be started at the centre and work outwards so that the ridges and ripples form evenly towards the edges.




 As I got near to the edges I decided to do some rows further apart, partly because by now I had spent enough time on one sample and secondly because I wanted to see how it would look and I have to say I like the effect as this does look like ripples on a pond.

I think this type of stitching could be a feature in a Journal Quilt since we are using water as a theme for our Journal Quilts at the moment.

It would look even more interesting if the fabric was coloured underneath the stitching and then the ripples on the top.  This might be worth trying out at Quilting Arts.

My next task is to do a sample of Sashiko so I hope that won't take too long and I hope to put the results on here.