Sindh, a large region in southeastern Pakistan, includes the fertile central plains of the Indus River and the vast Thar Desert to the east. It is home to ralli quilts, a textile tradition that extends north to southern Punjab and Cholistan in Pakistan and east into Rajasthan and Gujarat in India. The women who make rallis are as diverse as the quilts themselves. There is a saying from the Thar Desert that “the earth grows a different type of human being every hundred miles.” People here belong to hundreds of tribes and ethnic groups, each with distinct traditions, languages, dress and cultural identities. Rallis are one of the best known forms of art from this part of the world.

Rallis showcase a range of techniques; patchwork, appliqué, embroidery, and quilting all appear in quilts from the “ralli region.” Some patchwork patterns, like this one, have very small pieces. Patchwork like this, with a repeating overall pattern, is called farsh or “floor tile” design. Each of the repeating blocks (in alternating colorways) is composed of 36 triangles, meaning that the quilt’s center field contains 2,160 pieces.

You can learn more about ralli quilts by visiting our brand-new “World Quilts” module, "The Ralli Story," that launched this month!

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