Applique Practice

After all the amazing applique we've seen over the last month, I decided that the only way to appreciate it was to try it myself.

Applique we saw in Kutch was used on all sorts of textiles, from hangings to camel covers to quilts. The quilts are handmade by the women of the house and decorated with applique and embroidery. The same techniques are used today and we saw lots of women in the villages working on pieces for personal use, but people are now using synthetic fabrics and chemical dyes rather than the natural dyes and cottons we saw in old pieces.

Here's a look at some of the applique we saw while documenting the textile collection:

I decided to try a few of the techniques myself. A lot of the designs are made by cutting fabric like a snowflake, folding in quarters and snipping it in different patterns. I started with some simpler shapes: squares, triangles, and a cut border. It was slow going, even for something so simple, and made me appreciate how many thousands of hours were put into each quilt we saw. This was just a test piece, but I'm planning on starting a mini quilt with applique this summer.

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