Women Add a Special Touch to the Jutti

So while jutti making shifted to workshops, the hand work of embroidery and other embellishment was still outsourced to women.

Preferring to work in their familiar social environment, the women take their work home.

All the womenfolk in the house participate in the activity. This brings in supplementary income that helps support the family.

A craftswoman sitting in her courtyard, making embroidery designs on shoe uppers. It is a common sight to see the women working with the aid of a long staff or stick, as seen in the picture.

Embroidery is done mainly on the front piece of the upper, using a hook tipped awl called katani. The stick seen in the picture helps to hold the piece in place.

Piping being attached to a hand embroidered, beaded upper.

A woman working on an embroidered shoe upper embellished with mirrors.

Here, she is seen stitching on the piping. Traditionally this was made of soft goat or sheep skin. Nowadays artificial leather called rexine is commonly used.

Nowadays, much of the production of juttis has adopted lower priced mechanised inputs, thus effectively increasing the customer base of the industry.

Machine embroidered uppers are more commonly used than the beautiful and laborious hand embroidered versions.

Yet even now, there are some aspects like adding a touch of metallic thread to the design, or the stitching of the piping, that need hand work. These are the functions that women continue to perform.

For a machine embroidered upper, the women’s handwork is restricted to making fine hand embroidered borders in metallic thread.

The mass market for handmade juttis now mostly uses artificial leather which goes by the name of Taiwanese sheet. Often, this comes with machine embroidered or printed designs. Seen here, is a jutti of Taiwanese sheet, where the element of hand painting is added to a machine stitched design.

The craft is as much a social activity as an economic one. News and stories are swapped as the hands work on industriously.

Women gather to embroider and stitch in a common courtyard after finishing their household chores.

A woman hand stitches the piping on an upper for a jutti, as her grandson looks on. Women’s work in the craft takes place in the midst of their family and household responsibilities.

Read more about Patiala's Jutti making tradition here:

- Makers of the Famed Patiala Jutti
- The Making of the Patiala Jutti