“Girls like us, who come from villages, learn how to embroider and then practice on household linen. We have now started getting orders from nearby towns and cities,” says Jaswinder.

Sisters, Mandeep Kaur and Sukhwinder Kaur, too, have managed to make a livelihood out of this traditional art.

“Boutique owners and garment traders approach us in the village. They provide us with the raw material and we embroider items for them. Of late, we have prepared a lot of items for export such as phulkari dupattas and hand fans. These have a lot of demand overseas,” says Jaswinder. She says though phulkari is very laborious art, she gets paid only Rs 500 for a piece. “I have been told that these pieces get sold for thousands outside the country and also fetch good money in India,” she says.

This self-help group is now being guided by the Punjab Agricultural University, under a programme called Rural Awareness Work Experience.

Says Dr Kanwaljweet Kaur, Department of Home Science Extension Education, PAU, “Under this project, we have adopted 62 families in this village. Our main aim is to identify women entrepreneurs and provide them with more opportunities. Like Jaswinder can earn much more if she has to deal directly with the trader and not rely on middlemen. Secondly, College of Home Science, PAU, has collected over 100 phulkari designs and patterns from across the state. Jaswinder can increase the variety of her creations by taking guidance from PAU experts”.

Jaskiran Kaur, a student of Class VIII, is picking up the nitty gritties of this art. As she counts the warps and wefts on the maroon khadi cloth, a geometrical design of shiny red, blue, yellow and white emerges.