Two of Kasuti’s closest relatives live in south India: Toda embroidery in the Nilgiri hills, and Lambani embroidery in Karnataka itself. Both count threads, both are women’s crafts, and today one of them meets Kasuti in the same hands.
What you’ll learn
- What Toda embroidery is, and how it compares with Kasuti.
- What Sandur Lambani embroidery is, and how it compares.
- Where the three crafts share stitches.
- How the Banjara Kasuti project brings two traditions together.
Toda embroidery (Nilgiris)
The Toda are a small pastoral community of the Nilgiri hills in Tamil Nadu. Toda women embroider white cotton shawls (the puthukuli, also spelt poothkuli) with bands of red and black, using a counted darning stitch. Like Kasuti, it is counted, geometric and GI-tagged. Unlike Kasuti, it uses only two thread colours on a white ground, and its texture comes from dense darned bands rather than separate motifs.
The cloth usually has woven red and black (or dark blue) stripes, and the embroidery fills the white spaces between them. Each pattern is made by counting threads with the needle, without drawing. The darning is packed so tightly that it can look woven, and the surface feels slightly raised.
Sandur Lambani (Karnataka)
Kasuti’s neighbour within Karnataka. Lambani (Banjara) women combine many stitches – cross stitch, darning, running stitch, appliqué – with mirrors, shells and coins, on dark cotton, for dress, bags and dowry pieces. Sandur Lambani embroidery, from Sandur in Ballari district, has its own GI.
- Alike: both share cross stitch (Menthe) and darning; both are women’s home crafts; both often use a dark ground with bright thread.
- Different: Lambani is bold, layered and embellished, with many stitch types and no rule about the back; Kasuti is restrained, strictly counted, and finished on both sides.
- Together: projects such as Banjara Kasuti have trained Lambani women in Kasuti – the two traditions now meet in the same hands.
Three crafts side by side
| Point | Kasuti | Toda | Lambani |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground | Dark handloom | White cotton with stripes | Dark cotton, often patched |
| Colours | Several bright colours | Red and black | Many bright colours |
| Counted? | Always | Always | Partly |
| Extras | None | None | Mirrors, shells, coins, tassels |
In more depth
Toda work up close
Toda embroidery is sometimes called pukhoor (also spelt pugur), a word reported to mean “flower”. The shawl is worn by both men and women and has a place in important community occasions. Motifs are said to draw on the Toda world: buffalo horns, flowers and the hills. Traditionally the thread was wool; today cotton and acrylic are also used. Toda embroidery received a GI, and women’s groups in the Nilgiris now make shawls, stoles, bags and table linen for sale.
For a Kasuti stitcher, Toda work is the nearest relative of Neyge: rows of running stitch packed and counted to look like weaving. The difference is scale – Toda fills whole bands, Neyge fills small shapes inside a motif.
Lambani work up close
The Lambani (also called Banjara, Lambada or Lamani) were long-distance traders and carriers who settled across the Deccan. Their women’s dress – a full skirt, a backless or tied blouse and a head cloth – was richly worked, along with bags and cloths for dowry. Lambani pieces are often made from several pieces of cloth patched together, then covered in stitching, mirrors, cowrie shells, coins and tassels. Craft writing describes a large number of stitch types in one piece, some counted and some free.
Banjara Kasuti
The Banjara Kasuti initiative near Vijayapura trains Lambani women in Kasuti and employs them on skill-graded wages, using fabric from local weavers. It links the craft’s revival with wider goals such as education and access to banking and health care. It also shows something important: a craft can pass to a new community and stay true to its method, as long as the method is taught carefully.
Tips for learners and teachers
- Practise Neyge with Toda in mind. Work a Neyge band in only red and black on white Aida. It shows how much pattern two colours can carry.
- Learn restraint from Kasuti, energy from Lambani. Put a Lambani square and a Kasuti buti side by side, then design one piece that takes a little from each – labelled honestly.
- Count, don’t trace. All three crafts teach the same discipline: the needle and the weave decide where the stitch goes.
- Visit if you can. Sandur, in Ballari district, is a day’s journey from Bengaluru, and Nilgiri craft groups sell at fairs and online. Seeing real pieces beats any picture.
- Use the right names. Teach learners to say “Toda embroidery” and “Lambani embroidery”, not “tribal embroidery”.
Common misunderstandings
“Lambani mirror work is a kind of Kasuti.”
No. Lambani is its own tradition. Traditional Kasuti uses no mirrors at all.
“Toda embroidery is woven.”
The stripes are woven; the patterns between them are embroidered. The tight darning only looks woven.
“If Lambani women stitch it, it isn’t Kasuti.”
Kasuti is defined by its method – counted, hand-worked, four stitches, no knots – not by the community of the maker.
“All south Indian embroidery is the same.”
These three crafts sit within a few hundred kilometres of each other and look completely different. Each has its own name, story and GI.
For earning and teaching
For earning: buyers who love Toda or Lambani work are a natural audience for Kasuti. Explain the family link in one line, and let the difference speak. If you combine crafts, credit each by name.
For teaching: the three-craft table makes a strong short lesson for learners in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, who may already own a Toda shawl or a Lambani bag. Ask them to bring it in.
Sources and uncertain points
- Banjara Kasuti details follow the D&D ebook, chapters 17 and 19.
- Toda and Lambani details come from general craft knowledge.
- The meaning of pukhoor as “flower” and the sources of Toda motifs are reported; spellings vary.
- Whether the back of Toda work is neat is described differently in different sources.
- Numbers of Lambani stitch types vary widely between sources.
- GI details are as reported; check the GI Registry for exact entries.
Check yourself
- Can you name the shawl the Toda embroider, and its two thread colours?
- Which Kasuti stitch is closest to Toda darning?
- Can you name three things Lambani work adds that Kasuti does not use?
- Can you say where Sandur is?
- Can you explain why a Kasuti piece made by a Lambani embroiderer is still Kasuti?