These brightly colored dresses use phulkari, a traditional embroidery from the Punjab region that straddles Pakistan and India. Pictured,2017counter for years (following a number in the hito-futa-mi counting system)3The exhibition was held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the United States in May.
Pulkari is a "flower job" (PHULKARI,PHU=Flowers,KARI=.(work). The base cloth is made by hand-spinning and hand-weaving cotton in the Punjab region, and embroidered with silk imported mainly from China. They use parallel straight stitches, called darning stitches, as the main method of embroidery, and also skillfully use other stitching methods to achieve various designs.
Phulkari was an important factor in determining the material wealth of women in the Punjab, and young women who learned needlework from their elders sometimes made them as a dowry when they got married.
Learn about the climate crisis Pakistan is currently facing → "Pakistan's Climate Crisis: Floods, Finances, and the Future"
Learn about cotton production in India → "India: What is the background to the poverty faced by cotton growers?"
(Photo:Regan Vercruysse / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])