A jet black pallu worked over completely with a temple scene - deities, diyas and flowers in scintillating multi-coloured threads. A rich purple with a myriad of multi-hued peacocks dancing across its border. A pale pink chiffon with a single line of tiny blooms stretched in an elegant diagonal stripe.Padmaja Bade's lovely Kashida-worked saris would be a really good addition to any wardrobe. Kashida is a form of delicate, geometrical embroidery done with a single strand of coloured thread. The work is a simple variation of a running stitch with the stitches perpendicular to each other. What is important is that both sides of the worked fabric look absolutely similar, and this is where Padmaja's true expertise manifests itself. Not only are her designs beautiful, they are so neat that you would be hard put to distinguish the right side from the reverse.``Embroidery has always been my hobby,'' says Padmaja, who started off as an announcer at AIR. But marriage, followed by two children, did not prove conducive to the irregular timings. She decided to do something from home and what better than this form of embroidery which she could handle with great dexterity.She began with little bits of thread-work on children's dresses and progressed to more elaborate work on saris. Her work was so neat, her colour-combination so unique and the designs so startlingly unusual that orders flooded in. Soon she found that she could not cope single-handed and began to train women from the nearby slums in this art. What began with a modest investment of Rs 300 now has a turnover of Rs 2 lakh. What began as a part-time work in spare moments now includes at least 20 helpers.Padmaja's creations are mainly done on Garden chiffons or taspas, on Chamundi silks and even on plain Kanjeevaram saris. The designs are mainly ethnic. What is unique is that she can make each motif in at least a dozen different ways - Tulsi Vrindavan, peacocks, elephants, kites, deers, diyas with stands, gopur (domes), mandir khambas (pillars) and even images of deities, all in different sizes and viewed from different angles. Born with an artistic bent of mind, she creates her own patterns painstakingly, using graph paper. Each design could take her almost three or four days to formulate, and as many days again to trace out on the fabric. The final embroidery takes even longer - maybe three to four months. ``A lot of patience is required but that is what produces the final result,'' smiles Padmaja.This year, Padmaja was awarded the first prize by the Vasant Kale Smriti Foundation Handicraft Puruskar. In 1996, her work was selected by the Bhartiya Hastakala Nigam to be exhibited at a national fair. Her stall at the Kala Academy, Panaji, was also showered with accolades. Her work has also been selected for a three-day exhibition currently being held at Hyderabad by the Jagatik Marathi Parishad.Padmaja has for long wanted to hold an exhibition, but so popular is her art that the moment she accumulates a few completed pieces, they are immediately snapped up by customers.
