My Mom's Creations:

Fig 1

Friends,
The month of March which is actually my birthday month but this year March had totally moved me. It gave a shock of my mother's demise. At the time, we all sisters and my brother were with her in Bangalore at my brother's place where she was living since two and half year. We saw her breaths slowing down and down. She was bed ridden since one month, her age was 85 still her demise made us orphan. 

Mother is always special in every one's life. Every one has lots of memories about her / his mother. I also have number of memories, out of which I will share one memory with you. 

My parents wanted me to be a singer as I had already mentioned in my post of "Music: the divine art". They always wished to hear me (songs by me), both classical as well as light music. After the death of my father my mom lived in Amravati with my younger sister Sadhana, I used to go there frequently, many times she asked me to sing a song and I used to sing also; but this was only in the last month when I realized that how much my mom used to be delighted on hearing my songs, when Aparna (wife of my brother) told me this incident.
My mom's Sodium level was reduced, she used to talk irrelevant since last one month. 

One day she said," Alka sing 2-3 songs". (though I was not at my brother's place at that time) 

After some time she said to the wife of my brother,"Aparna, today I am really so satisfied as Alka sung 4-5 melodious songs".
Hearing this I could not control my tears 😭.

She was very efficient manager. She managed the business of my father "Liberty Art Service", a business of painting, the movie advertising boards. It was very hard core business due to it's dependency on the working artists. Big banners like 60 ft x 20 ft, 100 ft x 20 ft size were painted in the studio for talkies decorations. Some of the photos of talkies decorations made in our studio (Fig 2, 3 and 4),

Fig 2

                        

Fig 3

Trade mark of our studio

Fig 4

As I have already written in "About me" of this blog, she was (and will be always) the only inspiration behind all my arts. Though she never did knitting or crochet work but she was interested in every new creative thing she forced us to learn that.
Not only she inspired us but she herself creates number of things based on various arts. But I had very few photos of her creations. So to share them with you I have devoted this post to "My Mom's Creations".

She had worked some cross stitch embroidery on table cloths, mats etc. only one photo of  cross stitch work done by her with embroidery threads on Jute square is available. (see fig 5) This is a small mat used while worshiping God. 

Fig 5                                                   Fig 6

Fig 7

Another beautiful embroidery work made by her was the baby blanket with knot stitch (Fig 6,7 ). She made it at the time of her first grand daughter that is my daughter. After 36 years also, today we are using it as a washing machine cover.
She made patch work dolls, animals on the baby blankets of all of her seven grand children. I have photo of only one of the classic patch work embroidery which a small baby's photo (Fig 1).

Fig 8

She had done much of bead work. Beaded rangolies around the lunch plates. Each design was different (Fig 8). Some more rangolies were there but I don't have photo of them.






She made many articles by using white beads (we call it pearls) on velvet cloth. I had two photos, one of Toran, a strip used to put on the door. Blue velvet strip was decorated by bead flowers and small bells. See fig 9.
Another photo was of pair of peacocks which mom made as a rangoli but later on we used it for decorating any thing. (Fig 10)

Fig 9

Fig 10

Fig 11

One more special creation of my mother was "Halvyache Dagine", the jewelry made by halva. Halva  (Fig 11) is the special Maharashtrian recipe made from suger and sesamum or suger and poppy seeds. In Maharashtra jewelry of this halva is made for newly married ladies and newly born babies on the eve of Makar Sankrant. Fig 12 shows the complete Halva Jewelry set made by my mom which content crown, necklace, earrings, mangalsutra ( a special kind of necklace with black beads only married ladies wear it) different types of bangles, rings for hand and leg fingers etc In fig 13 my cute little brother and in fig 14 my beautiful sister wearing all Halva jewelry made by mom.

Fig 12

Fig 13

Fig 14

She also used to sew big banners required for our studio. She sewed her own blouse, our frocks etc.

At the time of arrival of every grand son / daughter she sewed many small dresses again I missed all those photos.
She also used to do quilting. Number of baby blankets she made by quilting and used small pieces of cloths she had.
I have only one photo of naming ceremony of my daughter (Fig 15) in which some of her creations in quilting can be seen and that knot stitch blanket (shown in fig 7) can also be seen.

Fig 15

She drew beautiful rangolies but again I don't have any photo.
Her affection about new thing and her creativity can be seen in her last few days also. She saw one soap case in TV advertisement. It was made of sponge, she explained that when the soap finished some stuff remained in the soap case which can be used from the sponge case to wash legs 😛. She ordered my brother and described him how to make that and her obedient son and my loving brother made it and the result was (it remains unfinished and she left us) ......

Fig 16