Rabari Skirt Border

This beautifully embroidered ghaghara border we found in a small Rabari village just north of Bhuj, Gujarat. It is a common practice to find other uses for the time-consuming embroidery when the rest of the garment has become unusable for one reason or another. In this case I do not know anything about the rest of the garment other than the fact of it being one of the heavy, gathered skirts that are generally reserved for brides. Whether this border was once embroidered onto a contiguous piece of cloth or sewn onto an existing garment, I do not know.

The ground fabric for the artful embroidery is black cotton and the embroidery threads are also cotton. Square and triangular mirrors abound in the motifs which are Kachhi Rabari designs.

At the top of the border are curving designs done in square chain stitch, called ambo, which is one type of mango tree motif. In the above picture some fading of the threads can be seen in the blue stitches on the left. The interior of the diamonds that make up the center of the ambo design are filled with a loose herringbone stitch.

Triangular mirrors form the bottom of the mango tree design. The stitching used to hold these mirrors in place on the fabric is very intricate with the stitches stretching out to the orange chain stitch in long lines at the bottom corners while being forced into tiny spaces along the lenth of the triangle borders. Below is a close-up of the small designs between each of the ambo. A diamond of small chain stitches above a very tightly woven example of interlaced stitching.Next comes a border of the popti (parrot-like) design. The yellow square chain stitches are contiguous lines that are embroidered over the tops of one another when they meet. An elongated chain stitch is used for the center fill.

In this shot of the back of the embroidery can be seen the jumbled maze created by the stitches on the inside fabric. It is easy to detect the different designs despite the messiness.Underneath the line of popti is a very intricate border, bavaliyo - thorny acacia, in between two lines of white square chain makoliyo borders. The bavaliyo is perhaps one of my favorite Rabari embroidery designs because I love the mixture of stitches. A square mirror, a line of herringbone stitching, an interlace stitch square, another line of herringbone stitching and so on, all encased in the ever-present square chain borders. In this example the mirror is sewn on by two different color threads which is intriguing. Did the embroiderer run out of the original color or just get bored with one color? Another popti line completes the border just above the bright red bias tape hem.

While the hem is machine sewn to the fabric on the front with a contrasting white thread, it is hand finished on the back with a bright green thread.

Judy Frater's book "Threads of Identity" was of invaluable help as reference for the stitches used, names and meanings of the embroidery motifs.

A small enigma

In the same tiny seaside village of round huts where we found the baby mobile, we found this. I am still not absolutely certain, but I believe it to be a hindhoni - a cushion worn on the head for carrying objects around. However, I could be quite mistaken. There is a paradox in what we were told by our guide and the research that I have been able to do after our trip. We were told that this object and another similar to it were children's bracelets. I loved that explanation :) This piece is certainly small enough to be a decoration for a child, it will not even pretend to go over my hand. At the same time, in all the books and pictures that I have looked through, and in all the pictures that my husband and I took - nowhere are there Rabari children wearing bracelets of this kind. There are many instances of Rabari girls and also Harijan children wearing bangles and either silver or gold bracelets, but nothing so brightly beaded!

It is possible that this is actually from another tribe or from the mainstream Gujarati community rather than being Rabari, despite the fact that we bought it in a Rabari village. Unfortunately, I don't know enough to be able to say with certainty! At the moment my opinion remains that this is a ceremonial carry ring for use with the copper pots that women carry on their heads when welcoming guests to the village. Or perhaps for resting a pot on a table or the ground?
The construction of this beaded ring began with the beads being threaded on a string which was then oversewn through the red fabric and into the stuffing. Inside the red fabric (as you can see in the top picture where I was so curious that I had to open up part of it...) was a roll of plain fabric. It is rolled so tightly that it is extremely hard and made the object much heavier than one expects. The inside roll is sewn together to meet in a circle and then the red fabric is whip stitched in place to cover it.
The tassels are made with 3 baby cowrie shells and cotton threads of many different colors. The circumference is: 3.5 inches across to the outsides.
The thickness is: .75 inches

Baby Toy

In a tiny Rabari village of round houses on the coast of Gujarat we purchased this baby toy. It is perhaps supposed to be a parrot, though that is just a guess based on other triangular type motifs that are labeled as parrots in some of my research books. Typical of Rabari "stuffed" objects, it is very stout and heavy. The stuffing is tightly rolled fabric sewn into the desired shape then covered with the decorative outer layer. We were informed by our guide, and the gestures of the Rabari woman who sold it to us, that it was a baby toy similar to a mobile.

The stitches:

The yellow lines are Chain Stitch.

The white squares are Back Stitch.

Yellow and orange square and rectangles are in Satin Stitch.

The mirrors are held on with an incredibly tight Cretan stitch and surrounded by white Running stitches. Two of the mirror on the top of the triangle have cut through the stitches on one or both sides.

The white zigzag holds the triangle together down both sides and tiny tassles of orange and yellow have been sewn to all three corners.