Ekta Kaul Studio

Fancy embroidering A map of london with me? Sign up for my workshop ‘Stitching a Sense of Place’ at #madelondonmarylebone on 19,20 or 21 october. Made entry ticket £10 includes the workshop. Follow the link in bio to book! #ekta_kaul #embroidery #workshop

Map your story on London Story Map with embroidered with all your favourite locations. I do custom sizes and colours of maps of towns, cities and countries. DM me to find out more about the commissioning process. #storymaps #ekta_kaul 📸 @yeshen.uk

Borders in textiles are so interesting. They frame the piece in beautiful patterns - sometimes simple graphic ones and at others exuberantly intricate ones. Growing up in India, borders in textiles were part of the everyday. My mother would often choose a sari for it’s border patterns or colours- I loved the graphic simplicity of her temple border saris from Southern India. The quilts that we slept in had beautiful block printed borders and the dhurries (flat rugs) in the ha...llway had borders finished with blanket stitches. Without ever noticing it I imbibed the rich Indian material culture and the way it celebrates its textiles. I try to imbue the essence of that in my Maps and their borders. Seen here is the border of my London Story Map. The border is minimal and monochrome, adding to the contemporary feel of the piece. I hand embroider a row of stitches in a deep red to accentuate the border and a nod to road markings. I will be showing this map at #madelondonmarylebone 18-21 Oct 2018 @tuttonandyoung. Come and see it and my other maps. I will be at Stand 21. #ekta_kaul #textilleartist #embroideryartist #fibreartist
See More

My British Isles Map is embroidered on a textured silk. Every map is made to order. I customise the map by embroidering personal icons that are meaningful to you- locations of life events, the town where you grew up, married, work or simply where you travelled to and loved it. 📸 @yeshen.uk #ekta_kaul #embroidery #cartographyinlondon

Lovely afternoon embroidering Maps with these lovelies. Thank you SO much for coming! @imogen.cockpit @vanessahogge @amykelly_18 Emma Sims.

I had a Fabulous bunch of creatives at my embroidery workshop today. Here’s what @imogen.cockpit said afterwards #Repost @imogen.cockpit with @get_repost ・・・ “What a lovely afternoon taking part in @ekta_kaul’s map embroidery course! Loved learning new stitches and can’t wait to get home so I can keep working on my map. If you’re interested in taking one of Ekta’s courses you can sign up through her website. Would highly recommend to all abilities.”

Had a super afternoon teaching embroidery to the lovely @dianestapes today. #ekta_kaul #shortcourse #embroidery #cartographyinlondon #mapart #stitch #cockpitarts #london

It was such a joy teaching lovely @ecstandohar who came all the way from the USA! Swipe to see what we did. #ekta_kaul #stitchmaps #cartographyinlondon #shortcourse #embroideryworkshop

This map is my ode to parks of London, Regent’s park in particular. I love the tranquility parks offer amidst the often rushed city days. As soon as I enter a park I get that feeling of my inner self slowing down, I breathe deeper, I look up at the lush foliage and tune into bird songs. Isn’t that precious? The trees gift us with the fragrance of new leaves in spring and come autumn the delicious sound of leaves crunching under feet or a cool shade on a hot summer day. These parks are our sanctuary from a busy city life. I love them. Do you have any favourites where you live?

Hello to all friend old and new on IG! Thank you for choosing to be a part of my journey. Every single like, comment or share means so much to me! For those of of you who’ve recently joined me, I’m a textile artist. I work primarily in stitch and embroider maps of places based on personal narratives. I love graphic monochromes as much as deep saturated tones. My scarves are a way of exploring colour and drapes. I also teach masterclasses... at my studio to beginner and experienced embroiderers/quilters. I love exploring museums, the smell of books in libraries, browsing stationery shops and haberdasheries. I grew up in India where I trained in design and later trained in textiles in the UK. I work from my studio @cockpitarts in a buzzing part of Central London. I’m mummy to two little people and married to a lovely man who is a techie yet an artist at heart. Balancing mummyhood and my creative business are a constant work-in-progress for me. So that’s me, please do say hello and introduce yourselves. Thank you SO much once again for choosing to support me!! Xxx
See More

There are no coincidences, as a dear friend reminded me recently. (You know who you are ). How appropriate then that I should come across this beautiful poem ‘INDIGO’ by Ellen Bass in the @newyorkermag podcast while painting my Hyde Park in blues. Have a listen https://itunes.apple.com/…/tiana-clark- reads-n…/id784600888…. Sharing apart of the poem here, read the rest https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/1 0/16/indigo ———-//——————- INDIGO by Ellen Bass. ... As I’m walking on West Cliff Drive, a man runs toward me pushing one of those jogging strollers with shock absorbers so the baby can keep sleeping, which this baby is. I can just get a glimpse of its almost translucent eyelids. The father is young, a jungle of indigo and carnelian tattooed from knuckle to jaw, leafy vines and blossoms, saints and symbols. Thick wooden plugs pierce his lobes and his sunglasses testify to the radiance haloed around him. I’m so jealous. As I often am. It’s a kind of obsession. I want him to have been my child’s father. I want to have married a man who wanted to be in a body, who wanted to live in it so much that he marked it up like a book, underlining, highlighting, writing in the margins, I was here. Not like my dead ex-husband, who was always fighting against the flesh, who sat for hours on his zafu chanting om and then went out and broke his hand punching the car. I imagine when this galloping man gets home he’s going to want to have sex with his wife, who slept in late, and then he’ll eat barbecued ribs and let the baby teethe on a bone while he drinks a cold dark beer. I can’t stop wishing my daughter had had a father like that. I can’t stop wishing I’d had that life. Oh, I know it’s a miracle to have a life. Any life at all. It took eight years for my parents to conceive me. First there was the war and then just waiting. And my mother’s bones so narrow, she had to be slit and I airlifted. That anyone is born, each precarious success from sperm and egg to zygote, embryo, infant, is a wonder. And here I am, alive. Almost seventy years and nothing has killed me.
See More

So today I painted the Hyde Park. It’s part of my #parksoflondon series. Did I say how much I love all the parks in London? So lucky to have open green spaces in the city that are for everyone. #workinprogess #ekta_kaul #cartographyinlondon

Work in progress #parksoflondon #ekta_kaul #cartographyinlondon

I went on a fantastic walk with the very knowledgeable Ann Davey of @antiquelacelady other day and learnt so much about this city I love and call home. #london

New works in the making. I love pairing with watercolours. #ekta_kaul #textileartist #embroideryartist #fibreartist #workinprogress

New works in the making. I love pairing with watercolours. #ekta_kaul #textileartist #embroideryartist #fibreartist #workinprogress

This is my ‘I’m -totally- focused-concentrating’ face 😃

Today I had the pleasure of teaching embroidery to the lovely @yaohu71, a talented ikebana artist from Shanghai. When she told me her 90 year old master who taught her in Japan, I was blown away. Yao is an economics major, but went all the way to Japan to learn ikebana choosing the world of flowers. She told me that she tried to express the spirit of the flower through ikebana, choosing branches, grass and other natural elements to hold the flowers up. How lucky I am to meet these amazing people from around the world, who follow their passion. #gratitude #ekta_kaul #ekta_kaulstories #cockpitarts #stitch #embroidery #maps #london