You celebrate your birthday, special occasions and festivals like Christmas, Diwali or Pongal wearing new clothes. But have you ever given a thought to the fabric that is converted to the clothes you wear? In ancient times, people used barks of trees, and leaves to cover their bodies and it wasn’t really enough. “I am turning over a new leaf for the New Year!” is what you might have meant literally had you lived then.
Cotton was cultivated in India in the third millennium B.C. Handloom fabric is cloth woven on the looms. It is woven by weavers who are skilled in the craft of weaving. They sit for hours before a wooden frame, which has yarn running according to a pre-determined pattern, and create the magic of handloom fabric.
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The fabric consists of warp and weft. The yarn is spun from cotton, and loaded on to spindles. The warp is sometimes stretched across the street, so that it does not bunch up when the weaver works on the loom. You might see this if you visit any of the weaving villages, like Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu. The design of the final fabric is plotted on to graph paper and transferred on to boards with holes punched into them so that the weft yarn can pass through in a vertical manner.
With a swift movement of pulling the cord before the weaver and passing the shuttle with the warp thread across, warp meets weft and the joinery results in handloom fabric. You should visit a weaving centre to understand how this is done. Cotton is the best fabric for a hot, humid climate, and of course, silk for special occasions.
Does silk grow on trees like cotton? Certainly not! Special kind of worms, which feed on mulberry trees, spin a fine yarn around them and form a cocoon from which they emerge when they grow into butterflies. It is this delicate yarn that is used to make silk yarn, later woven into soft and lustrous silk cloth.
There are many such stories around the textiles in India. Why not get to know more about the hand-woven cloth? Explore and make your own projects on the finest textile jewels.
