Chikankari Mul Chanderi Dress Material Ivory Tonal Floral

This chikankari cotton dress material from Lucknow carries a full floral jaal down the front panel vines leaves and small butis embroidered in tonal beige gold thread on a soft ivory ground with ladder stitch bands framing the neckline placket An unstitched set ready for your tailor Here is how you can tell it is hand embroidered chikankari and not a machine copy Turn the fabric over the reverse shows tiny knots and finished thread ends where the artisan completed each motif while machine embroidery leaves a flat uniformly looped back Run a finger over the dotted phanda stitches hand worked knots sit slightly raised like grains of millet where machine satin dots lie flat and glossy Compare any two flowers along the jaal in hand work no two are exactly alike and the cloth puckers very gently around dense embroidery because each stitch tensions the weave by hand Chikankari is Lucknow s GI tagged needlework tradition worked stitch by stitch with needle and cotton thread largely by women artisans embroidering from their homes across the city and its surrounding districts A panel this dense takes days of patient needlework before it ever reaches a tailor Tailor it into a straight kurta with churidar or a relaxed A line set for summer offices and daytime gatherings The tonal palette dresses up easily with pearls or oxidised silver and works right through the warm months