Two of our quilts — Blue Heirloom and Sage Blossom — are finished with Jaipuri quilting. The third, Vintage Rose, is kantha-stitched, and it costs more to make. Same price for all three right now, but the question comes up often enough to be worth answering: what is kantha, and what's the difference?
Where kantha comes from
Kantha is a running-stitch technique from Bengal, in eastern India and Bangladesh, that is at least several centuries old. It began as a way to make something from nothing: worn-out saris and dhotis layered together and stitched through with simple, closely spaced running stitches until the layers became a single soft, quilted cloth. The stitching was the whole structure — no batting, no binding, just thread holding cloth to cloth.
What it looks like
Row upon row of small straight stitches, usually a few millimetres apart, running across the entire surface. Up close you see the thread; from across the room you see texture — a fine rippling that catches light. Our Vintage Rose quilt uses it over a hand block-printed rose floral, so the stitching sits on top of the print rather than forming a pattern of its own.
Jaipuri quilting, by comparison
Our Blue Heirloom and Sage Blossom quilts use the Jaipuri method: a cotton top, pure cotton batting, a striped cotton reverse, and widely spaced hand quilting lines that hold the three layers together. It's lighter and puffier — the batting does the insulating, so the stitching can be sparse.
Why kantha costs more to make
Hours. A Jaipuri quilt might take a day of quilting; a kantha quilt of the same size takes several, because the stitches are a tenth of the spacing. Every one is pulled by hand with a needle. That's the entire difference — same cotton, same block-printing workshop, more time.
Which to choose
- Jaipuri (Blue Heirloom, Sage Blossom): loftier, warmer, reversible to stripe. The better bedspread.
- Kantha (Vintage Rose): flatter, denser, with that rippled texture. The better throw — it drapes over a sofa arm or the foot of a bed and looks like it was always there.
Care
All three: machine wash cold on a gentle cycle, line dry or tumble low. The kantha stitching is robust — it was invented for cloth that had already been washed hundreds of times.
See all three in the Quilts collection. Each ships in its own cotton carry bag.