Indian Cross Stitch Knitting
Woollen weaves
“WOW! what a lovely painting,” I exclaim as I gaze awestruck at the large colourful frame adorning the wall. Then a sudden doubt makes me amend my remark. “That’s cross-stitch embroidery, isn’t it?” I ask my hostess hesitantly. Puja Bhakoo, smiling amusedly , says,” You’re granted another guess. Take a closer dekko.”
And sure enough, a closer scrutiny of the picture of a pretty village lass that I was gushing over revealed that it was in fact a canvass tastefully embroidered with wool instead of the usual threads or paints.
Curious to know more, I settle down for a cosy tete-a-tete with this talented creative director of Today Advertisers. as far as her vocation goes, she has to her credit some prestigious ad campaigns like those of Maruti and Godrej, to name a few. Hearing her talk about her work, I am tempted to ask, “Aren’t weaving magic with wool, on the one hand, and creating advertising punch lines for corporate giants, on the other hand, poles apart?” Puja admits that both things come to her naturally. She has a flair for knitting though she has not received any formal training in making paintings out of wool. Creativity obviously is a common thread in both areas of her interest.
But how did her art happen? Puja regales me with an interesting tale. Being good with the knitting needle, she had been supplying home-made woollen wear to top garment stores like Childcare, Inter-Shoppe and Cosmic. But her real affair with those balls of wool took off only after she moved to Chandigarh, where she also continued supplying knitwear to leading local showrooms. A casual visit to her wool supplier one day brought her face to face with heaps of multi-hued wool that had been discarded. Finding her supplier at his wit’s end in knowing what to do with the wool leftovers, Puja bought the entire stock from him.
And what better use she could have put those odd bits and pieces of wool strings than to weave them into magnificent pieces of art! Thereby started her romance with the canvas.
Initially, she started by copying patterns of fruits and vegetables on a canvas and then embroidering them with wool. Slowly and steadily, as myriad colours filled in the empty spaces, the frames came to life. These fruit and vegetable motifs blended well with the decor of her dining room. One of her paintings is thus aptly titled “Fruitsie.”
But this art required a lot of patience and perseverance. Informs Puja, “Each floral pattern took at least six to eight months to be embroidered.” “Though,” she adds, “doing cross-stitch embroidery with wool certainly takes less time than that done with thread.”
Slowly, she graduated to more intricate and tougher themes like making portraits of Rajasthani people and others. part of her collection is a woollen portrait of painter M. F. Husain, pictures of two traditionally clad rajasthani men titled “Lagaan” and that of a turbaned man called “Pathos” and another titled “Pride”.
These portraits required subtle shading and just the right interplay of light and dark. Many have been the times when she’s had to rip off patches of woven wool just because the facial expressions of her subject weren’t turning out fine. In fact ,while making portraits with wool she first embroiders the portions that require the maximum shading.
And in this endeavour she has got whole-hearted support from her husband, son and daughter. Her husband, who owns their advertising firm, in fact, was the one who kept egging her on to give shape to her skill with wool so that her creative juices didn’t dry up. And though Puja took up wool painting as a hobby, she is now toying with the idea of going commercial, but only if there is a potential market for her art here. “For the time being, I’m thinking of holding an exhibition in Delhi,” says the artist.
With such unique objects d’ art being churned out in her home, it is but natural that all the creativity that is being nurtured within the four walls should find a pride of place on those very walls. Each room reflects the warmth of those cosy reams of wool that have been strung together in a definite form or shape. These embroidered canvases lend such distinctness to her decor that one gets the feeling of thumbing through the pages of a glossy on interiors.
- Rashi Khanna
About the Author
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Janlynn Counted Cross Stitch Kit (8 X 10 Inches) 14 Count Janlynn Counted Cross Stitch Kits. Kits contain white cotton Aida, carded six-strand cotton floss, needle, graph and instructions. Made in USA… |
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