In January 2006, the second Parzor Embroidery Module took place in Navsari. Navsari with its sizeable Parsi population was ideal, as the craft would be introduced to the women of the community. The workshop was conducted at Jamshed Baugh, Navsari. Mr. Ashdeen Lilaowala was the workshop coordinator and was aided by Mrs. Ava Khullar, textile expert and Ms Rohini Sakhalkar. Other participants were Mrs Zenobia Davar, Ms Shireen Bhesania, Mr Asif Sheikh, textile designer from Ahmedabad and Ms Carmen Fernandes, Head Designer, SEWA.

More than 40 women participated in the workshop from Navsari. A few of them were residents of Surat, Bharuch and Baroda. Two participants from Navsari were residents of the WZO Old Age Home. Five craftswomen of SEWA had come from Kutch and Radhanpur.

The age group of the participants ranged from 20 to 72 years. Some participants belonged to the low-income strata of the society. Hence this workshop offered them a unique opportunity to learn a new skill, which could also be carried forward for income generation. The women from SEWA are the skilled embroiderers who, besides upgrading their repertoire of Parsi embroidery, served as important sources of information on different stitches for the other participants.

The workshop started with a brief introduction about Parsi Embroidery wherein the basic satin stitch was taught to the women. Since many of the participants had no prior embroidery experience, all the women were given small and easy motifs to embroider with threads of a single shade. The women were divided into small groups of ten each to enable personal interaction with each textile expert. All the groups were shown the method of preparing a “khakha” or the design template.

An audio-visual presentation on the history of Parsi embroidery was made to the participants. It elaborated on the motifs, colours, fabrics and other nuances of Parsi embroidery. Mrs. Ava Khullar also gave a short talk on the Indo-Chinese trade links and how the embroidery traces its roots to that trading. Original pieces were displayed to understand and correlate with images shown in the presentation.

Most of the women had got well versed with the satin stitch after some practice. They were also taught French knots and given more elaborate motifs to embroider such as peacocks, roosters, stylized flowers and foliage. The skilled embroiderers from SEWA also demonstrated to the other participants the use of ‘aari' for filling-in the Parsi motifs with chain stitch.

The overall response to the workshop was extremely positive. The enthusiasm displayed by all the participants was very encouraging. Later stages of the workshop even saw a few teenaged girls enrolling to learn the embroidery.

The primary aim of conducting the workshop was to disseminate information about the embroidery among the women of the Parsi community and also to introduce a new craft skill to them. It was felt that a continuing, long-term programme to take forward the embroidery module would vastly benefit the local Parsi community as also lend impetus to revive the Parsi embroidery in a focused manner.

All the participants of the second Parzor Parsi Embroidery Module.