The Craft
Loom to Luxury prides itself in staying true to tradition and helping weavers promote their craft to the wider world. In the detailed document attached here you will learn all the steps of the process followed by our brand to produce the exquisitely handcrafted fabrics that you love.
Graph (1–2 weeks)
When the design is received, it is drawn
onto a full-scale graph, which is used to set
up the loom correctly.
Punch cards (3–6 days)
From this graph, “punch cards” are created. These are small pieces of card-board that are later sewn together and fed through the loom machine. Like a most basic computer, the presence or lack of a
hole punched acts like a 0 or 1, dictating to the loom which parts will move when and, ultimately, what pattern will be woven.
The quantity of punch cards needed
depends on the complexity of the design.
For a simple, repetitive weave, only a few cards are needed. For more intricate designs, it can take hundreds of cards to complete the repetition of a single motif.
Dyeing (1–2 weeks)
While the punch cards are being created, the silk yarns are dyed and dried. This is normally done in big batches with a third party dyer, but small batches are occa-sionally dyed in office. For the future, the plan is to have all dyeing processes happen in-house by an in-house dyer.
Warp set up (2–3 days)
After all yarns are dyed, they are strung onto a warp. Our minimum warp length is 30 meters.
Thread bobbins for weft (2–4 hr per day)
The dyed silk comes in hanks, which are then untangled in preparation for threading it onto bobbins.
The unraveled yarns are then spun onto bobbins, which are used for the weft threads. This work is completed by the women.
Loom set up (7–10 days)
The loom needs to be prepared before weaving: threads from the previous warp must be attached to the new warps and a process of “knotting” (below) is completed to attach strings coming down from the jacquard machine (next step) to the indi-
vidual yarns of the warp.
This is the mechanical part of the loom called a “Jacquard” machine. This is the most complicated type of weaving and must be learned from a young age.
The punch cards from above are mounted onto this jacquard machine as part of the loom set-up.
Weaving
The time it takes to weave a certain fab-ric depends on the complexity and design of the fabric. Some fabrics that are more complicated may take an additional
person to weave (most common with “jamdani” weaving).
At the feet of the weavers, inside the pit dug into the ground, pedals correspond with different “heddles” that lift different groups of warp threads at different times.
The weft shuttle is then thrown across the warp and this also dictates the pattern of the fabric.
Wives of weavers will often help with more intricate weaving techniques such as jamdani.
This is the “test” weaving facility, which will house 10 looms and a small dyeing system once completed. This small-scale version of the community facility center will give Jitendra the chance to implement and test some new systems, as well as work out some kinks before the larger facility center is built.
Cutting (1–3 days, depending on amount)
Some fabrics, called “cutwork”, have large floats that are then cut after the fabric is woven. This work is exclusively done by women.
