The Hand, the Stitch, the History

The Hand Remembers

Thursday 18th December 2025

Today was quite a busy day after about 10 days  have actually managed to do yoga. The viral infection really took the wind out of my sails. Anyway, it's good to be getting back into form slowly. Then there was cooking to be done and I had to drive to Mapusa to get some stuff, bought veggies on the way back. So, by the time it came down to do any stitching it was past 6:00pm. I continued to work a with the split stitch.  I noticed a funny thing today. While I was driving back, planning my stitching sting for the evening.  I thought of how strained my eyes were yesterday. Maybe my eyesight is getting weaker  or the rough texture of torn and shredded white organza was creating problem. It’s hard to tell.

So I thought that I'd do the cheat way you know—of doing split stitch. Make the stitch and then pierce the two twists of the single floss from above. It’s much easier. Only difference is that you get a stem stitch texture at the back. 

I kept trying to do this but my hand was habituated to bringing the needle in the other way and then take it out through the thread make the stitch and then go back halfway and then take it out through the thread and it just insisted on doing that so finally I gave in. And have finished the area I had been trying to complete over the past few days.

Nobody can really identify how the stitch was done but I thought it was uncanny that the hand has such a strong sense of memory of how things should be done

What I was encountering is something the craft theorists call procedural memory — the kind of knowing that lives in the body rather than the mind. Where years of repetition have trained the hand to move in a particular way, and therefore it resisted the shortcut. The hand remembered and insisted on doing the split stitch the right way —no shortcuts!

 

Split Stitch

28th December 2025

I’ve been thinking about how split stitch came into my stitch vocabulary. It isn’t something I was taught, it is something I was curious to learn and taught myself. The split stitch (a form of back stitch) is one of the basic embroidery stitches, visually resembling a small compact chain stitch, but with a narrower and flatter appearance. It's an easy stitch to work and is especially useful when stitching around tight curves. It is this factor that attracted me and once I had learnt it, I also loved the flat surface it gave. Far cleaner than either satin stitch or stem stitch. It was also more forgiving — I hate using the hoop, and when the fabric is layered like the current piece, it does the job without puckers etc.  The split stitch is also known as the Kensington outline, split back, and opus anglicanum.

 

Coptic linen panels (belonging to the ancient Christian Church of Egypt) from the 7th and 8th centuries were embroidered in straight, satin and split stitches. The split stitch was extensively used by English embroiderers in opus anglicanum needlework (opus anglicanum - Latin for

‘English work’ refers to English medieval ecclesiastical embroidery, coined in the 13th century to describe the highly-prized and luxurious

embroideries made in England of silk and gold and silver thread, teeming with elaborate imagery.

 

In some of these embroideries, the entire surface of the cloth is

embroidered with images of saints and prophets worked in stem and split stitches, with the remaining fabric surface covered with couched gold thread.

 

Opus Anglicanum was done mainly for the purpose of the rich and powerful churches of the medieval ages with expensive materials such as fine silk and gold threads and was labor-intensive as well, making the garments very expensive. So much so, that it went on to become a status symbol for the religious leaders and royalties.

 

Curiously, when I spent some time at the Museum of Christian Art in Goa, looking at church vestments, I found no trace of split stitch in any of the ecclesiastical garments in their collection. Instead there was greater usage of Persian techniques and Zari with some bold satin stitch.

I’m still researching the influences that led the Franciscan churches in Goa, away from European traditions, to embrace a whole new way of embellishing church vestments.  

 

A Parallel Concerto—Mozart, Split Stitch and Zari

16 December 2025

Today I sat with the piece — the third in the Co-creation series — working on it for hours at a stretch. I wanted to fill in the space created by the couched gold thread with a colour that echoed the muddy-coloured crochet I’d  added later. The crochet had made the piece feel bulky, and I wanted the whole to read as a continuum — to draw some of that colour inward, into the inner sanctum, as it were.

I put on some music — an album of Mozart’s violin concertos. I hadn’t really listened to Mozart for a long time. In my thirties I was a devoted listener; I ruined many cassettes playing them endlessly in the car. I was never very fond of his symphonies, but the chamber music, the clarinet concertos, the piano works — those I loved. I even named my black Labrador Mozart.

I wasn’t so familiar with the violin concertos. But as I listened, and by the time I reached the Fourth Concerto in D major, I began to notice a pattern. Mozart would take a melodic line that was  poignant, even melancholic and suddenly, shift it. There was no preamble, no warning. It was as if he was saying: enough. Enough dwelling on pain. Enough dwelling on happiness. Enough dwelling in darkness. This interchange kept occurring, and somehow he even managed to create melancholy within a major key. I don’t know how he did it.

At the same time, I was struggling with my single-strand split stitch. I was working on a fabric base that had been ruptured; the organza threads were everywhere, constantly catching in my needle as I tried to lay the floss against the surface and pick into the twist. I kept struggling to control it.

As I listened to Mozart, it felt almost as if I were stitching with him. There was effort, and then suddenly the stitch would fall into place. I would move forward and it would feel smooth and beautiful. Then the struggle would return. The thread would slip out of the needle. I would lose the needle altogether. It felt like a kind of parallel concerto, if one could call it that. The split stitch became a kind of Mozart stitch — no scope to dwell on any feeling for too long, not an indulgent somatic experience sustained by benign repetition.

At this point I was reminded of a cotton Ikat  weaver I met in Koyyalaguddem in Andhra Pradesh, during one of the projects I did there. Behind his loom was an old black-and-white television. I asked him why it was placed there. He said he liked listening to cricket commentary while he worked. If the television was in front of him, it was distracting. Behind him, he could listen and still weave.

That distinction stayed with me. Many craft processes are repetitive and exacting. The hand already knows what to do. What is required is sustained attention — the ability to remain there long enough for the work to accumulate. Background sound, in such cases, is not inspiration. It is support. It occupies one channel of attention so the rest can remain steady. The stitch proceeds according to its own logic; the listening allows the maker to stay with it. As I did with Mozart—engaged with the music that enabled me to work for 4 hours at a stretch.

As I worked around and within the boundaries created by the couched gold threads, what stirred a deep curiosity in me was my continued use of gold — or rather, zari. Zari comes from a Persian word zar, so it stands to reason that it is not an Indian invention. Historically, it came through Persia and was popularised by the Mughals. Trade moved along the western coast with Surat becoming a centre for Zari production. And,  during periods of instability and invasion in that region,  people migrated— jewellers, metalworkers, weavers — relocated  to regions of greater stability. They were housed and given work by rulers such as the Pallavas, Cholas, and Vijayanagar kingdom.

Within these temple economies— the Cholas and Vijayanagar, gold thread acquired ritual and symbolic associations related to divinity, radiance, and auspiciousness, but it never lost its connection to prestige and excess as employed by the Mughals. Where zari was unapologetically lush and ornate, used in court dress, ceremonial textiles, furnishings, and regalia, a logic closely mirrored by the Catholic Church’s use of gold embroidery to signify divine authority through material splendour. 

Textiles in these religious economies functioned as sacred infrastructure. Gold and silk were not about fashion, but ritual necessity. Gold entered cloth not as ornament, but as an expression of divine light and cosmic order, shaped by temple economies and forms of political theology

 As I reflected on this history, I also reflected on myself. I own jewellery, but I rarely wear it. In Delhi, for a significant occasion, yes. But in daily life, nothing. My mother used to lament that girls cannot be without jewellery on their wrists. But bangles interfered with my work, so I chose not to wear them.

I then thought about how gold entered this piece in the first place. It began with sunlight glinting on the waves. That light created a crack in me — an opening that let something in. Not just visual light, but a philosophical one. It was not an intellectual understanding. It struck the gut, spread through the body, and settled as something unshakeable.

Being drawn to gold outside the body, in a controlled, meditative, material way, I realised that I  may be responding to its older function — divine light, cosmic order, such as is evoked in the Vedas where,  Indra is described as ‘golden hued’ Agni as ‘golden haired’ and the source of life is hiranyagarbha or the golden womb — rather than to its modern role as social ornament.

Standing at the tip of the estuary, on what we call Sandbar Island, this is what I perceived: nothing I do exists without a past. That past is formed by people around me, by their pasts, and by the pasts that shaped them. Everything is layered and co-created as were the images I was recording: sun glinting on water, rippling on sand ripples—a confluence of light, water, earth and wind.

It occurred to me then, within the context of living that whatever one feels or thinks—the authorship is divided. It does not belong to a single person— everything is co-created.

That was a moment of realisation — when understanding moved through the body and settled. I think that is what truly holds the key to this piece.

Reflecting that complex layering, the work appears strange — threads removed, delicate and transparent in places, yet dense and impermeable in others. Fabric from layers beneath surfaces through the organza above. Materials at odds with one another, yet organically combined. I am still attempting to create harmony and tonal parity within the composition — a balance that, in life itself, may well be impossible.

 

Thinking Aloud —

Where the Judgement Comes From

I began this process journal partly in response to reading Glenn Adamson’s Thinking Through Craft. I was hoping to encounter a discussion of craft as lived process, but instead found a great deal of art‑world language aimed at making craft legible to contemporary art discourse.

For me, craft does not need to be translated into theory to be understood. Process is the very core of crafting. Working with textile and stitch, meaning emerges through material negotiation, repetition, resistance, and decision over time. I began recording my process not to analyse myself, but to pay closer attention to how material intelligence operates in the making itself — how fabric, tension, layering, and intuition shape the work as it unfolds.

13 December 2025

Fact is, when I think of tabulating my working process — the process by which I make my art — I realise that so much of it is ingrained in how I look, what I feel, how I approach it all.

Yesterday, I was working on one of the co‑creation–inspired pieces. The third one. I had been more creative with it, introducing blues and a lot of gold. What I noticed was that it looked bare without my usual tendency to create a border.

I found the idea of adding crochet around it and then using that to create buttonhole lace interesting. But as I worked on the crochet, I used Doli. thread, which made it feel rather heavy and ungainly. Trying to contain the original within the framework that was evolving seemed clumsy.

But that sense — that it looked clumsy — where did that come from? What was I trying to achieve that made it appear clumsy? What aspect of design composition, visual impact, or my own sense of beauty was being thwarted by this feeling of clumsiness?

What am I trying to arrive at? What idea, ideal, or beauty am I moving towards, and why?

What I mean by ungainly is this: the thread is heavy, and the work itself is on organza. I have layered it with tissue organza and ripped the fabric by taking out threads and exposing different layers. It has a very delicate quality. But the Doli thread is thick. I wanted to create a muddy kind of texture relating to the sandbanks of the river — the ripples that are co‑created by sun, light, and wind. That is one reason why I’ve added so much gold.

I’ve used 6 ply metallic thread or zari, which is couched, and I’ve also stitched with single‑ply zari. When I added the border, that thread was thicker, and it felt clumsy because of the imbalance. Yes, it is a perceived imbalance, and I’m trying to interrogate why this imbalance feels uncomfortable to me.

The reason I give a border to my work — and this is a tendency of mine — is that borders are something most block‑printed textiles have. Every sari pretty much has a border. I have a quilt with block‑printed bootis (motifs) and a four‑sided border. Perhaps it comes from that tradition. Perhaps it comes from the Mughal miniature tradition of the hashiya, where the border is also saying something, in conversation with the piece.

I like the idea of the hashiya because it allows me to have that conversation. The reason I wanted to create something with buttonhole lace was that if I framed it in the usual way, I would have contained it within a mount, and I didn’t like that idea. It would have given the piece no space to breathe. And if I had just left it in the awkward shape it had evolved into, it looked unfinished.

And perhaps that is my discomfort too — that I don’t like to leave things unfinished, or what looks unfinished. How do I decide what is finished? How do I decide what is unfinished?

Perhaps this comes from my training as a designer. Perhaps it comes from an inherent need in my mind to resolve everything. Perhaps it comes from a deep sense of shame that I carry.

A sense of shame that emerges from past experiences that were erroneous — where, in retrospect, I feel naïve, ignorant, and downright stupid—embarrassed to have been that person. I’m still unravelling that sense of shame, but perhaps, within that context, I try to finish everything with a neat border.

Perhaps.

Chikankari - A Choreography of Stitches

Recently, I spent five days in Lucknow two of which were taken up with travel and sightseeing. The other three, I spent at Mamta Varma’s atelier in the heart of Chowk. Buzzing with life on the outside, the inner sanctum was imbued with her quiet spirit and resilience. The work she creates is outstanding. They’re precious evocations of an ancient art. When you see the fineness of Bhairavi’s Chikankari, nothing else matches up. I couldn’t afford those luxury prices but I was happy to see someone making hand crafting a luxury.

On the way to Lucknow Junction Station, to catch our train back to Delhi, we had some time to kill and went to Hazratganj market to check out what else the market had to offer. Shalini couldn’t bring herself to buy the coarser version of chikan at otter high end chikankari shops. Threads sticking out at the back. Embroidery that wasn’t done with love and passion but for rozi. 

What I’d managed after just three days of learning actually seemed better than the chikankari we had seen.  I couldn’t believe that the ends hadn’t been worked into the embroidery as Nasreen had diligently imposed upon us during our training sessions.  She was particular about the direction of the needle, the direction of the frame, the tension of fabric and thread. The number of strands needed for which kind of stitch and more. Things that cannot be spelt out but must be observed. 

She shared stories of how she came to learn chikankari. Where her teacher, designated by the government to impart the skill to women, wouldn’t teach her everything she wanted to learn. Determined as she was, she found a way around it. Her teacher had lice. Under the guise of looking for them in her hair, standing behind the woman, Nasreen had a great vantage point to study the then forbidden jaali stitches - her speciality today. 

Seated on the floor, each taking a backrest against the wall or steel almirahs, eyes cast on the tiny frame covered with stitched together scraps of fabric for a grip to hold and stretch the fabric to be embroidered. Fingers nimble, manipulated needle and thread with an easy dexterity. Just looking you’d think it was simple enough. But, sitting amongst them, I felt almost foolish to imagine I could actually learn enough. 

Perhaps, I didn’t master any of them. Maybe I can’t learn the entire repertoire of 32 stitches. But, what I did learn was that chikankari is not just about a stitch or even 32, it’s the art of deciding which stitch will go where. Bakhiya with hatkati, with ghas patti, bijli, phanda, tepchi-pechni and jaali, but it’s the configuration of these stitches that really creates the masterpiece. As also the skill of working with them. 

I also had the privilege of seeing Mamta and Paola work together with the block printer Aleem. Watching the meticulous, patient decision making of what block to place where. Some blocks were no more than 3/4”. The block printers chaapon the fabric with Neel. The blocks for chikankari are different to the blocks for printing fabric. They’re designed to keep space for the jaali and bakhiya, in as much as space for hathkati amid the printed lines. In many ways watching the process unfold was like observing fabric being woven. You’re never quite sure when threads floating mid air through heddles become the fabric on the loom. The women create their magic by consensus among themselves with Mamta, Paola and others and each piece is a labour of love. 

Squatting on the floor chowkri-maar, albeit awkwardly because one knee isn’t as strong as the other, pouring over the frame, focussed upon Nasreen’s fingers as she manipulated needle, thread and fabric. I felt a deep sense of camaraderie with these women. It was as if they were my tribe. They understood my calloused fingers, they relished my tools, loved them as I do. They understood the song of needle pulling  thread. And, like me, they experienced the sukoon of repeated movements of stitch. They knew the discipline of battling knots. They knew the impact of needle and thread on their psyche. But, above all, they were grateful to leave their burkhas on the wall hooks and be free among their brethren. Koi kisi ki naani, koi cousin, some betrothed waiting to be married. Some with families and spouses they loved and wished to have for seven lifetimes. Others abused, divorced and single mothers. There were stories in each pair of eyes. And that was all one saw when they left for the day when burkhas and hijabs covering everything else. 

Who’s to Blame….Whose Fault is it…..

May the tide

never tire of its tender toil

how over and over

it forgives the Moon

the daily exile

and returns to turn

mountains into sand

         as if to say,

you too can have

this homecoming

you too possess

this elemental power

of turning

the stone in the heart. into golden dust. 

                                     

(Forgiveness) by Maria Popova

Patterns fascinate me. I’ve been studying patterns in myself. I found them difficult to contend with, find forgiveness, acceptance and leave behind regret and shame. Years of therapy helped, but not nearly enough. It was my walks along the sea shore, looking at nature in its myriad patterns that solace started emerging. 

Nature is renowned for her exquisite patterns and living by the Arabian sea, I have been spoiled by those created by water, wind, crabs, sand, leaves and the sky. I’ve been particularly mesmerised by the patterns that water creates. Or, rather co-creates, wherein the resultant pattern that the eyes see is the consequence of multiple layers of water, over sand, rippled by water and wind, and water rippled by incoming and out going tides and/or the wind, as also the sun glinting on these ripples. It’s a marvellous experience to see this unfold and I never tire of it. 

My training as a textile designer, means that I have created numerous patterns over the years. I recall my early years of learning -  one of our assignments was to dissect a bhindi (okra),  draw it, the repeat it in pre-set ways.

The Art Nouveau patterns with their sensuous lines and mirrored repeats have been another favourite. However, all these years of making patterns, looking at fabrics with patterns, has probably sensitised me to finding them everywhere. 

The patterns I’ve seen at the banks of rivers and the sea shore can be complex in their layers, such that they become evocative of the patterns of our psyche which emerge in similar manners. 

As human beings, we are co-created in layers. By people who themselves are layers of history, politics, familial and cultural traditions and conditioning, technology and so much more. It’s impossible to visualise them, much less find any sense of awe and fascination in them. Particularly in contemporary times, when scientific analysis creates a kind of judgement, even if it’s not intended. Psychology labels these patterns and traits creating scope for judgement rather than acceptance and forgiveness. 

For instance, if you have/had a narcissist parent, you have developed patterns of coping that may habituate you to accepting abuse as familiar and even attractive (however weird and foolish it may sound) This leads one to create more and more painful experiences. Some may recall the Stockholm syndrome, which is not that different. When you realise the reasons for manifesting this and other patterns, there’s judgement of both parent and self. Acceptance that it’s just another facet of being, in the larger canvas of life, could take a life-time of therapy, if that. 

Earlier, before CBT and other kinds of psychotherapy became popular and were deemed necessary, it was all put down to karma. Cause and effect, which it is. There’s not much one can do about the patterns that life generates within us, knowing what caused it quells some of the anxiety perhaps, but visually perceiving the tantalising effects of the patterns co-created at the river banks and sea-shore provide a very powerful tool for finding beauty where otherwise one is inclined to blame, shame and self hate. 

We need to find forgiveness for ourselves and others. Taking photographs isn’t enough to move beyond the negative feelings and connotations that have been imprinted on the mind, leading to feelings that self-destruct, so I decided to try and re-create the patterns I witnessed the manifestation of, at the river bank.

I had some photographs sand ripples and patterns digitally printed onto cotton fabrics. This provides the bottom-most layer. I then drew out warp and weft threads from a black and gold tissue fabric. Initially I had intended to just reduce the ends per inch to make it supple. But, the weft was plastic thread covered with gold metal and it didn’t lend itself well to being tweezed out of the fabric. I then started to pull the gold threads together, creating dense woven threads amid a loose weave left by moving the weft threads. They formed ripples and I loved the effect. I later did the same drawn thread processes with the aquamarine and silver tissue fabric and white silk organza. 

I haven’t covered the entire base fabric equally. The layers are replicating the colours of the bank of the River Chapora in Morjhim, Goa. 

The top layer is fine silk organza. It creates a layer that is transparent and holds all the others together. 

I’ve printed the photograph so that I can trace the dappled light and create a template for embroidery. I’m not sure whether to embroider the organza extraneous to the rest of the layers and then add more stitches later to bind them together, so do the needle work with all the layers, picking up some with the embroidery thread, but just minimally, to keep it light and evanescent. 

I’m thinking of the latter for it’s more organic, albeit more complex too. The thread will be stranded cotton and some metallic threads in gold and silver. The Split stitch seems just perfect for this. All in all a tall order, but I’m super excited. 

An inspiring passage by Nick Cave is what I’m hoping to meditate upon as I stitch, recreate the water dappled with sunlight, the sand ripples adding the dark backdrop for perfect reflection on the water’s surface. Where he  shares that “- In a way my work has become an explicit rejection of cynicism and negativity. I simply have no time for it. I mean that quite literally, and from a personal perspective. No time for censure or relentless condemnation. No time for the whole cycle of perpetual blame. Others can do that sort of thing. I haven’t the stomach for it, or the time. Life is too damn short, in my opinion, not to be awed……We all have regrets and most of us know that those regrets, as excruciating as they can be, are the things that help us lead improved lives. Or, rather, there are certain regrets that, as they emerge, can accompany us on the incremental bettering of our lives. Regrets are forever floating to the surface… They require our attention. You have to do something with them. One way is to seek forgiveness by making what might be called living amends, by using whatever gifts you may have in order to help rehabilitate the world. - Nick Cave

Stitching is meditative. It’s expressive and the layers, the photographs add such a sense of beauty to this process, that one hopes, it will re-habilitate me and you.