Chapter 12: Graded Practice Projects

These four projects are ordered from beginner to advanced, and are designed to be used directly as a classroom syllabus or a self-study progression. Each builds on the skills of the one before it.

Project 1 (Beginner): A Simple Gavanti Border

• Skills practised: Gavanti stitch, thread starting/ending without knots, working in a straight line.
• Materials: 14-count Aida (approx. 15 x 15 cm), one colour of six-strand cotton thread (two strands), size 24 tapestry needle.
• Task: stitch a straight horizontal Gavanti line the full width of your fabric, then a second parallel line 6 squares below it, forming a simple two-line border.
• Success check: front and back should look almost identical; stitch length should be perfectly even throughout.

Project 2 (Beginner–Intermediate): Murgi Zig-zag Band with a Simple Buti

• Skills practised: Murgi stitch, repeating a small buti motif into a continuous border (Chapter 8).
• Task: stitch a Murgi zig-zag band between two Gavanti guide lines, then add a small diamond-shaped buti (built from Gavanti) centred above every third zig-zag peak.
• Success check: the zig-zag rhythm should be perfectly regular; the buti motifs should be evenly spaced and identically sized.

Project 3 (Intermediate): A Corner Motif Combining All Four Stitches

• Skills practised: mirroring a border into a corner (Chapter 8); combining Gavanti/Murgi outlines with Negi and Menthi fill.
• Task: plan a small corner motif on graph paper first (a simplified gopura or lotus works well), outline it in Gavanti, add a zig-zag Murgi accent band, fill a solid area with Negi, and add Menthi texture to a small background section.
• Success check: the corner should mirror cleanly where the two border directions meet, with no visible seam or misalignment in the repeat.

Project 4 (Advanced): A Miniature Saree Pallu Panel

• Skills practised: full compositional planning (Chapter 8) — scale gradation from a dense border toward sparser interior motifs, colour planning against a dark ground.
• Materials: a dark-coloured handloom cotton or cotton-silk remnant (or dark-coloured even-weave fabric for a first attempt), multiple thread colours (traditionally red, orange, yellow, purple).
• Task: design and stitch a panel roughly 20 x 30 cm, with a dense decorative border along one short edge (in the spirit of a pallu), one or two larger standalone motifs (a peacock, elephant, or gopura), and smaller, sparser motifs fading toward the opposite edge.
• Success check: the panel should demonstrate the gradation principle from Chapter 8 — visually "heaviest" at one edge, lightest at the other — and should hold up to a front/back reversibility check on all Gavanti and Murgi sections.

🖼️ IMAGE PLACEHOLDER — PROJECTS-GALLERY-01 (4 images) Type: Photograph Content: Finished-sample photographs of Projects 1–4, shot flat and evenly lit against a neutral background, front and back both shown for Projects 1–3 to demonstrate reversibility. Suggested size: 1000 × 1000 px per project (front); 1000 × 1000 px (back, where applicable) Format: JPG Caption: "Project [N] finished sample — front and back." Alt text: per-image, e.g. "Finished Gavanti border sample, front and back, showing reversibility."