Lilies in the light / Lilies in the dark shirts

Some designs come to life in a single sketch. Others take years. This one took two.

It began with an off-white linen shirt embroidered with blue silk threads, our first sample. Soham, our cousin, modelled for it and loved it. We decided to gift it to him. But the threads bled in the wash, and the shirt was ruined.

We tried again. Same result.

We considered anchor threads, these are trusted and non-bleeding but the design used a hand-held embroidery machine, and anchor is not compatible with it. This shirt, along with Solace, is one of the few that ever used a machine in our otherwise wholly hand-embroidered collection.

Disheartened, we shelved the idea. But for Soham, we made one on a bottle green base with off-white threads. No coloured threads, no bleeding, no fuss

The design quietly made its way into family wardrobes, Rohan had one made in blue, then black; Pranav got one too. So we brought it back properly. This time as Lilies in the Dark, a darker base, off-white colourless thread.

Lilies in the Dark got a lot of love, so we returned again to where it all began but to make it work, we switched to anchor threads and skipped the machine. And Lilies in the Light bloomed again, on off-white linen, completely hand-embroidered.

Two versions now exist: one stitched slowly by hand, one aided by machine. One shadowed, one sunlit. Same design, stitched differently. One with the quiet rhythm of handwork, the other with the hum of a guiding machine. If you ever spot the two side by side, pause. See if you can tell them apart