2025 was an exciting year for us 🙂 VarnikaDesigns turned 15! VarnikaDesigns Blog turned 10! The Museum Memories Project turned 5! Immense gratitude to each of you for supporting, motivating and inspiring us.
Happy New Year ♥️
Designing Narratives: How ‘The Museum Memories Project’ Inspired Kareena Vaswani
Kareena Vaswani shares her insights on how ‘The Museum Memories Project’ has profoundly influenced her belief in the power of design as a tool for cultural preservation and storytelling.
Adieu 2024 – Welcome 2025 :)
VarnikaDesigns wishes you a very Happy, Healthy, Safe and Peaceful New Year. May 2025 be kind to you ♥️ We are grateful to all the people and institutions for supporting our new ideas in 2024 ♥️ details in link
Happy Women’s Day!
This 2023 Women's Day post is dedicated to the most awesome Priyanka Tolia and her Design Studio Chitku – a design and craft collaborative established in 2009. Wishing you, your team and this little girl the very best wishes for a peaceful life, full of love and safe women's day, every day!
The story of the dazzling ‘Gota’ embroidery: its past, present and future
Amidst all the glitter, glamour and glitz of yesteryear the shimmer and shine of Gota stands out! It has captured in its weave the fantasy of the times. Travelling from the markets of the Western Indian cities of Surat, Ajmer where they were manufactured, Gota came to be the ubiquitous accessory of every royal garment. Let us know of the history of the exquisite Gota embroidery based on original fieldwork.
Tushita’s contemporary reflection on Appliqué
The core idea behind my creating and designing these hand embroidered artworks is to highlight the beauty and importance of hand embroideries, which seem to be diminishing- thanks to the adoption of fast fashion labels across the globe. With this humble attempt, I wish to elevate hand embroidery to a more artistic and tasteful level.
The Art Of Appliqué in India 
Appliqué is derived form the Latin word ‘applicare’ meaning ‘to fold’ or ‘to fasten’. It is the technique of applying colorful fabric pieces on the base fabric. Raw edges of these patches are finished with a definite mode of stitchery work. It developed as a means of mending old cloth or old garments from economical considerations. There are a vivid variety of Indian textiles in woven, embroidered, printed and other techniques. Appliqué is a textile technology that survives till today, not enjoying any royal patronage, but as an essential part to daily existence.
Shrey Purohit, the adventurer dreamer :)
"My paintings are a means of conveying hope, that reflects the community and comfort around the neighborhood,” says Shrey Purohit, who has won two PleinAir Salon Art Competition awards and then "donated and auctioned his prestigious 2021 PleinAir Salon Art Competition’s best artist under 30 Award-winning ‘Downtown Near the Van Gogh Exhibit’ oil painting to raise funds for the homeless and needy in San Francisco." I am so excited because I had taught Shrey at a design school in 2017 in Mumbai.
Vikas Satwalekar: Colour personified
"Call me Vikas" - that's how I will always remember him. One of India's leading designers, creator of several landmark identities and logos like Doordarshan, Mother Dairy, TISS and HLL, chief designer and project head of some of India's best exhibitions and expositions...
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