Toda Embroidery

The Toda Embroidery is practised exclusively by the Toda women from Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. The women pound the grain, cook and mend the garments of the family, and some women devote time to the special embroidery with which they adorn their cloaks –“pootkhull(zh)y”. It is done using red and black threads on a white back ground, producing a rich effect. The embroidery is so fine that it is often mistaken as a weave at the first glance. The pattern / design / motif are embroidered by counting the warp and weft of the coarse fabric. This results in geometric patterns and this hand embroidery looks like a woven technique. The Toda embroidery is reversible and one can use both sides.