Artisan Focus Event - Unique Art Quilts from Gujarat

You may be familiar with our popular Chindi and Raw Chindi kantha quilts, made by our wonderful husband and wife team of quilt makers in Gujarat. Recently, we were lucky enough to delve into their unique collection of beautiful, handmade, abstract art quilts. These were made primarily as samplers to demonstrate their skills and different patchwork patterns and kantha stitching for prospective commissions.

We are bringing 8 of these colourful, contemporary patchwork quilts to you in a special online sale we’re calling Artisan Focus!

Many of you will know that India has been particularly badly hit with Covid recently. Covid has directly touched the lives of many of our partners and artisans in rural Kutch and Gujarat, including our quilt makers. Raimal, his wife and family recently relocated from the city to the countryside as a direct result of the pandemic. Buying these quilts has gone a little way towards easing the transition for them at a time when tourism and the local economy has taken a severe hit.

We knew it would be fun and interesting to be able to offer our customers pieces that are very different in style and colour to the other quilts in our collection, which are our own design. By contrast, these bespoke quilts demonstrate the design skills, composition and colour choices of the craftspeople themselves.

Each quilt is a one-off, and is made with remnants of fabrics collected by the makers. These pieces are true works of art, and would look amazing as wall hangings, at the head of a bed, or simply as a warm layer on a bed or draped over an armchair or sofa.

The kantha stitching, which is all done by hand, varies in style from quilt to quilt. Some stitching runs vertically, some diagonally, some is in multi-coloured thread. Our quilt makers are very highly skilled, and these unique pieces demonstrate the same attention to detail and expert patchwork and kantha stitching skills as on our Chindi and Raw Chindi quilts.

Browse and shop the Artisan Focus collection here.

These photos were taken by the amazing Tom Mannion at the Olympic Park in East London. Curious about the quilts’ poetic titles? These come from literature and popular music!