Support Women In Bangladesh By Buying a Hand-Stitched ‘Khushi Kantha’ Baby Blanket

Launched on 22nd April 2021 for International Mother Earth Day, Khushi Kantha (meaning “Happy Blanket”) sells beautiful, vibrant, and multi-purpose baby blankets made from reclaimed and ethically-sourced cotton, which are hand-stitched by mothers in Bangladesh.

Each blanket sold from Khushi Kantha helps a mother in Bangladesh to provide for her children with dignity.

Khushi Kantha is a social enterprise, and the organisation has set up a Crowdfunder page, with the goal of raising £10,000, – which will be used to train the first group of mothers. The funds will pay for the purchase of fabric, embroidery threads and other raw materials, as well as safety tests and the transportation of their first collection of ‘Happy Blankets.’ 

‘Kantha’ (which translates to “stitched cloth”) refers to the Bengali tradition of mothers repurposing their old cotton saris to create ultra-soft, multi-layered blankets for their babies.

Bangladesh is famous for its garment sector, but sadly, lots of fabric gets wasted at various stages of the supply chain, so the brand is collaborating with sustainability-minded members of the industry to rescue ‘deadstock’ fabric, to use it for the inside layers of their blankets.

Handmade with love, each Khushi Kantha blanket is unique, and takes up to 20 hours to stitch. As practical as they are pretty, the blankets can be used for pretty much every item on a parents’ daily to-do list, including:

  • Swaddling a new-born,
  • Using it as a mini playmat (both inside the home, and on the go),
  • Using it as a breastfeeding cover or sunshade, or to keep a little one snug in a sling on outdoor adventures,
  • And, they even serve as a make-shift changing mat, as and when the need arises.

The Founder of Khushi Kantha, Laura Rana, said:

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Instilled with the strength of the mothers who create them, we design them to withstand the daily wear-and-tear of life with little ones and be treasured from child to child. Reviving and repurposing the age-old Bangladesh ‘kantha’ tradition, we breathe new life into everything we do, from rescuing deadstock fabric from the Bangladeshi garments industry, to revitalising local economies.

Founder, Laura Rana – has spent 14 years working in international development and humanitarian aid in more than 30 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, and she first moved to Bangladesh in 2009. She has continued to live there on and off, ever since.

Founder Laura Rana

She was inspired by the birth of her half-British, half-Bangladeshi twin daughters to set up Khushi Kantha, – a social enterprise, devised to create opportunities for other mothers to use their existing skills, and draw on their cultural heritage to earn sustainable incomes.

Time and time again, I’ve been amazed by the resilience and generosity of Bangladeshi mothers living below the poverty line. It’s been a long-standing dream of mine to use everything I’ve experienced and learned over the past decade to start my own initiative, working directly with women whose position I could so easily be in myself if circumstances were different,” said Laura.

Find out more here: https://khushikantha.com

And to support their Crowdfunder campaign, click here.