Splendid Kaudi art - A sustainable enterprise for empowerment of rural women

The Kaudi art is one of the oldest folk art practised among women folk of Northern Karnataka and is also called as Grandmothers‘ art. It is prepared by old and used cloth swatches which unfolds the creativity of woman folk through their magnificent skill and imagination with thousands of stitches which depict the traditional folklore. In recent years this craft is slowly fading due to reduced commercial value and lack of interest among the present young generation. Therefore, revival of Kaudi art through value addition is a need of the hour for its sustainability. Hence, the present study is taken up with the objective for revival and restructure of traditional Kaudi for empowering the rural women and it comprised of historical documentation, restructuring of traditional Kaudi designs with design elements, organization of principles and skill development training programmes for rural women. Variegated home textiles were designed with Kaudi stitches and subjected to consumer acceptability. It was seen that among the home textiles developed, the yoga mat was found to be a trendy item as expressed by the consumers due to its usefulness and comfort properties. It was noticed that the perception towards traditional Kaudi art improved remarkably and consumers were convinced on various aspects viz., product diversification through restructuring, design element, principles of design for production of variegated Kaudi articles and its promotional techniques. Value addition to traditional Kaudi through variegated home textiles was found to be the best means for promotion of Kaudi technique, its sustainability and rural entrepreneur can help to establish start ups and microenterprise with minimum investment.