A eternal bond with needle and thread – Nahla Nainar,THE HINDU

Like most needleworkers, N Kamala measures her time by the projects she has completed.

“This one took me 50 days, from November 22, 2017 to January 13, 2018,” says the Tiruchi resident and former employee of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) as she unfurls a vast cross-stitch tapestry showing the famous Rock Fort temple.

Her home in KK Nagar is filled with objects shaped by her own nimble fingers: crochet slippers, purses, jackets, pictures made with a variety of embroidery stitches and an antique sewing guide published by Alsatian textile company Dollfus-Mieg and Company (DMC) that could be over a hundred years old.

At the age of 73, Kamala is no stranger to handiwork ventures — the bigger the better. “My siblings keep scolding me for all the time I spend on crochet and embroidery, and warn me about my eyesight getting weak. But I have never needed to use glasses till date,” she says.

Painting with thread

Kamala was one of four volunteers from Tiruchi who participated in the successful effort to create a Guinness record for the world’s largest crochet blanket (11,148.5 sq m) made by Chennai-based Mother India’s Crochet Queens in 2016. “I contributed 5 blankets of 1 sq metre each of 1 feet length and height,” she says.

Earlier, in 1998, she took part in the cross-stitch tapestry project launched by Trichy Innovative Ladies Union Needlework Association (TILUNA) to reproduce the Rajagopuram tower of the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple in Srirangam, which earned mentions in several Indian record books.

“I was inspired to try the Rock Fort picture because it is such an iconic part of our city’s landscape,” says Kamala, who got a commercial artist to draw the outlines for her on the matte cloth first. “I spent over Rs 2500 on the embroidery skeins. Getting the shades right is key to create a realistic image.”

A stitch in time …

A skilled tailor from her teenage years, Kamala, the fifth of six children, remembers helping her mother earn a small income through stitching blouses and petticoats for the women in their neighbourhood. “My sisters and I would do the cutting, and our mother would stitch the garments on her sewing machine. We would also enter our embroidery for contests,” she says.

She became a ‘crochet addict’ after learning the craft from her mother. “My father would translate the English instructions from an ancient DMC pattern catalogue into Tamil, for my mother, who would try them out with her thread and hook. Once she got the hang of it, my sisters and I learned from her. This catalogue is very precious to me, and since it’s been around forever in our house, it could be over a hundred years old,” she says.

A graduate in Chemistry from Holy Cross College, Kamala joined BHEL as a lower division clerk in Finance in 1966 and worked her way up through departmental exams, retiring as manager in 2008. “It was very difficult to find the time for craft on working days, but I used to devote two full hours to it during weekends,” she says.

Kamala maintains her needlework treasures carefully and displays them during Navaratri poojas at home. “If I had the time and resources that I have now, perhaps I may have learned much more about these crafts,” she says. “But above all, needlework has given me a lot of mental satisfaction.”