Collection: Kasim

Do you know what Kasim dye is?

“Kasim” is a historical natural dye made from fermented jaggery and iron rust. But like any other natural dye, you cannot directly apply this on the fabric to achieve color, instead, the fabric needs to be prior boiled in Herda water to make it absorb the dye. Kasim dye can give you different shades of greyish-black color according to its application.

We felt like adding some changes to our designs and kasim was the best fit here; its natural, uses less water during the process, dye was naturally made, and last but not the least results in black color. We’ve always used a single technique of embroidery per design but this will be something you’ve not seen. YET. We’re bringing the combination of different embroideries in our Kasim project.

Since the application of Kasim dye is not as effortless as any other painting medium, we initially started by working on some samples using the dye. The samples varied from using different brush strokes, different brush sizes & applying different pressure on it, creating stamps from Potato or paper or fabric and whatnot! But these techniques were ordinary and also the process was tiring to sit down and work on its production. We later tried stamping with treads. So what we do is take a cotton thread so that it absorbs the dye properly, dip it in the Kasim dye and then place it, the free flow of thread will create different surfaces, which cannot be replicated again.

According to the requirement on the half part of the placement & the remaining half will be folded over the threads which would result in symmetric stamping. The result was something new, that was never seen with any other natural dyes.