Sustainable Practice
Originally trained in screen-print and hand embroidery, Sara is continually drawn to traditional handcrafts and sustainable textile practices, including Ajrakh block printing, patchwork embroidery, and natural dyeing techniques. Through independent study, hands-on making, and time spent learning directly from artisans and makers in India, she has developed a deep appreciation for the skills, histories, and ways of life connected to these traditions. These experiences and shared skills continue to inform her practice, bringing heritage techniques into conversation with contemporary design and inspiring new interpretations rooted in tradition, innovation and sustainability.
Sustainable Practice and Shared Knowledge
Ajrakh Block Printing
Ajrakh block printing is a complex and highly skilled craft, traditionally created through a combination of hand-printing, resist techniques, natural dyeing, with careful attention to climate, and material.
Sara works in collaboration with Sufiyan and his team to explore new possibilities within traditional Ajrakh processes, drawing inspiration from the accidental beauty of Achadiya cloth. Using carefully selected hand-carved blocks, they create new compositions with motifs arranged in a looser and more asymmetrical way than traditional Ajrakh patterns. Printing onto different weights of cotton, layers of indigo, mud resist, iron, and natural dyes are built up over time, with mordants used to shift and deepen the colour.
Some pieces emerge as imagined, while others take their own path. Unexpected outcomes become part of the process — each variation opening up new ideas, textures, and colour combinations
Natural Dyeing
Working with fabric waste, Achadiya cloth, and pre-block printed silks and cottons, Sara works with artisans in Kutch using natural dyes and over-dyeing techniques to rework and renew old textiles, as well as create new designs. Using indigo, madder, and a range of natural mordants, they build layered tones of blue, peach, rust, and grey — transforming existing fabrics while allowing traces of their original character and history to remain visible.
Suf Embroidery
Exploring some of Kutch’s renowned embroidery styles, Sara has become particularly drawn to Suf embroidery. She spends time at Kala Raksha, a grassroots social enterprise dedicated to preserving traditional arts, learning about the variety of embroidery styles by expert women artisans.
Suf embroidery is a meticulous technique based on the triangle, or "suf", counted on the warp and weft in a surface satin stitch worked from the back. Motifs are never drawn; instead, each artisan envisions her design and counts it out—in reverse.
Sara works with Kala Raksha on collaborative designs, working with their traditional motifs and collaborating on new colours, shapes and compositions.
The Indigo Horizon Crop Jacket embroidered with Suf Mountain & Stars is available in the shop
Quilts
Working with embroidery artisans at Kala Raksha, off-cuts and scrap fabrics from Sara’s collections are transformed into patchwork quilts, cushions and hand-quilted textile hangings, giving new life to overlooked materials through skilled handcraft.
Collaborative Patchwork Artworks
Even the smallest off-cuts are saved and transformed into textile works. Working alongside the Patan community in rural Kutch, these remnant fabrics are repurposed into textile collages. Inspired by Bhuj and the Kutchi landscape, and guided by the shapes, colours, and textures of the cloth itself, each piece is collaboratively composed hand sewn using traditional embroidery techniques and motifs.
