Indian Amigurumi Series:Mohini the Mohiniyattam Dancer

 

Second of my series on Indian Classical Dance Amigurumi Dolls. Mohiniyattam to me is the most graceful of all the Indian Classical Dances. The costume is mostly white in colour with accents of another colour used in the borders or pallu of the dress. The jewellery is also relatively less elaborate than some other dance forms. The hair is arranged in a bun on the side of the head which is very characteristic of this dance form. The dance is very feminine and looks really beautiful and rhythmic.

For anyone who is unfamiliar with this dance form I highly recommend looking at some videos online of Mohiniyattam and if possible catch a live performance. Mohiniyattam is traditionally performed with live musicians and it is really spectacular.

This is what an authentic Mohiniyattam dancer looks like with all the costume and jewellery.

image courtesy wikipedia

So in my amigurumi version I have obviously simplified a lot of the detail to make it a little crochet friendly and more workable. I still did the side bun on her hair and the flowers around it. Also a version of the costume with the border. Usually the border on the dress is just gold but I wanted to add a bit more colour which is why I have made it blue. I also posed her a little tilted to the side which makes her more graceful I feel.

I always enjoy making the accessories on these dolls and the jewellery and the bindi is my favourite parts of this. Her little jhumki earrings also look really cute to me. 

On seeing my dolls some people have asked me about my design process. I am not a very on the fly crochet kind of person. So for me, all my designs begin with some quick sketches on paper. These are just very rough strokes to find the shapes that I want to design. I try different poses gestures etc. 

I find this is a much quicker way to do the design and it seems to work for me.

Although these sketches are not that pretty to look at, I am still going to share this with my blog readers so they get an idea of how I go about doing things.

 

For this design I felt the seated pose was not going to be easy for me to crochet and get stability. Although with the large heads that I design, even the standing ones need some thought to make them stable. Anyway, I liked the version on the left which is the standing one. I just wanted to giver her a head and torso tilt which is what I did with my final version:

She is a great favorite of mine and I hope to continue doing these dolls until I either run out patience, or run out of yarn. These are intricate and do require a lot of time to do. I typically end up making and unravelling each of these a few times at least until I am happy with the shapes and posture.

Keep watching my blog for more updates.