Jamshedpur: College students took a break from their books and learnt the intricacies of embroidery during a two-day workshop held at Jamshedpur Women's College in Bistupur, which concluded on Wednesday.

Organised by the home science department of the college, the workshop was aimed at making students pick up the art of embroidery and explore possibilities of building a career out of it.

Over 200 students of Jamshedpur Women's College and The Graduate School College for Women learnt about different embroideries like chikankari, kantha stitch, phulkari, kashmiri stitch, zardousi and mirror work or sheeshakari.

After the success of the workshop, Jamshedpur Women's College now intends to extend the art among university students. The college has sent a proposal to Kolhan University to organise more such workshops at university level.

"We have already appro-ached Kolhan University to support us in organising such embroidery workshops on a la-rge scale. There are many girls in rural areas who are excellent in stitching and embroidery and all they need is a little gro-oming," said Rama Subramaniam, head of the home science department of Jamshedpur Women's College.

The workshop also focused on marketing, consumer behaviour and theoretical aspects in the field of embroidery.

On Wednesday associate professor of NIFT Patna Satyendra Mishra addressed a session on consumer behaviour while design researcher and educator Suraj spoke on marketing and entrepreneurship.

Students too sounded happy to take part in the workshop. "We learnt a lot about embroidery in these two days. We also learnt about building our own business and thinking from customer's point of view. I would like to hone my skills in chikankari as I feel it's an extremely beautiful embroidery and has extreme market potential. This will also help women specially in rural areas become independent," said Chandni Sharma, a second-year BEd student of Jamshedpur Women's College.