Blogs

The art of Weaving

Today a cloth can be made by weaving as well as knitting. Since we are dealing with handlooms we will focus only on the woven fabrics and leave the knitwear for future blogs. Interlacing of yarn to make a flat piece of surface is called weaving. Basketry is the oldest form of weaving and still the most basic form to understand weaving of yarns to make a cloth. A fabric is woven by stretching a number of yarns on a loom, these are the warp yarns and passing through another set of yarns across over and under the warp yarns alternatively thus creating a cross section similar to those seen in a basket, though in a very fine form. Several processes, manpower and skills are required to prepare a loom, prepare the yarn for warping, preparing the warp for weaving and then finally weaving the cloth on a handloom. The interlacing or weaving too can be done is several ways using several techniques what we know today as ‘weaves’. The weaves developed from simple one up one down plain weave to basket weaves, twill, satin, extra warp, extra weft to further mechanisations added to the loom such as dobby and jacquard. The complex weaves earlier were done by making a graph representing the pattern (known as nakshi) and then preparing the loom by preparing a “jala” which would raise the warp according to the pattern of the desired pattern. All these techniques and the new modernised dobby and jacquard are being used today in India to weave beautiful handloom fabrics.