Huge collection of rich Indian Handloom Fabric: Folksmarket.com

Check our rich collection of Indian handloom fabric through this short video. 

                                         (Indian Handloom Fabric Collection by Folksmarket.com)

We are an R-Commerce (Responsible Commerce) Company with an objective of providing the market to the highly skilled and amazing weavers and artisans of India and worldwide.

How to wash your Handloom Cotton Fabric - Folksmarket.com

Hey folks! In our last blog, we have briefly touched upon the 4 ways to care cotton fabric and talked in depth about the cotton, its evolution, its properties, types etc. The reason was to know your fabric before you can start caring about them. Now this piece will briefly touch upon the ways you can wash your cotton fabric.

Normally its not a science. Most of the manufacturers give instructions as how to wash and care for the fabric. Yet they may not be complete for wanting of the space! Its always a good idea to acquaint some basic principles that can be selectively use for different kind of fabric(apparels and furnishing) rather than knowing each and every detail for each and every kind of fabric!

Fabric often gets stained because of greases, oil, waxes, polluted chemicals present in the atmosphere and dyes. The aim of the fabric care, thus is two folds:

1-      Removing the pollutants

2-      Ironing to remove the wrinkles and bring freshness to the fabric

Fabric care is the joint responsibility of you and your cleaning agent.

Washing your Cotton Fabric

A - Spotting the spots

          1-      Identify the area that needs special attention. Usually its    neck, underarms and cuffs that need bit more rubbing. So before washing, check these spots.

         

          2-      Check if the fabric has some embellished (beads, graphics, zari, glitter etc). This area needs to pull inside out while washing.

 

          3-      Categorize your cotton fabric as “All white cotton” or “Dyed cotton”. Dyed cotton can also be thought as printed, graphed etc. Aim is to wash all white cotton and rest of the clothes separately. You can have multiple batching of the clothes depending upon the need.

B - Choose the detergent

           1-      General purpose detergent works well for cotton fabric and most of the fabric. We need to see of there is any scum or leftover on the fabric.

   

           2-      Check whether your detergent is mild or harsh. One good domestic way is to dissolve the recommended (normally given on the wrappers) quantity of detergent in 900 ml of cold water and allow the detergent and water to sit for 24 hours. Note if there is a residue settled in the bottom of the container. Now if it happens, then be sure that these residues are not going to be washed easily and often they will leave the whitish stain on the fabric. They are called as scum.

            3-      Choose the detergent which leaves no such scum. Don’t settle for low quality detergents.

C - Bleaching of white stained Cotton Fabric

One of the important characteristic of cotton fabric is that it can be bleached easily and retain that saints look for years. Hydrogen peroxide is a great bleaching agent. But Chlorine bleach is normally recommended for cotton fabric.

1- Take around 4 liters of semi hot water. Make sure that water is hot enough to clean but not hot enough to damage the fabric. Ideally you should be able to insert your finger to judge that temperature of the water. Mix a cup of dry dishwasher soap and add 1/3 cup of bleaching agent. Ensure that the mixing of this is not taking place in a metal container.

2- Put all the stained white clothes in small batches in this mixture and allow the fabric to soak the bleaching water. Do not agitate or rub at this moment, just allow them to soak.

3- Remove the clothes in 30-40 minutes depending upon the intensity of the stained. In any way not more than 40 minutes.

4- After 30-40 minutes, put the fabric immediately into washing machine without rinsing the bleached fabric. Add some washing detergent, on your washing machine and when its about to reach the rinse cycle add a 2/3^rd of White vinegar (or distilled vinegar or virgin vinegar). Let machine completes its washing. Dry the fabric after wash in clothing lines or washing machine. But make sure that you still put the clothes in clothing lines even if you dried in machine. Sun rays are so essential to fabric! Allow them to breath in fresh air.

5- White vinegar is essentially a distilled form of vinegar that is a mixture of acetic acid and water. It’s a common household, economical liquid and environment friendly. It kills all the bacteria, fungi and moulds from the fabric.

D - Other batch of CottonFabric

            1-  Wash cotton fabric either in machine or hand wash. Use lukewarm water and laundry detergent.

            2-   Irrespective of the fact that you are washing in machine, soak the clothes for 30 minutes in a non metallic container with the detergent.

  

            3-   Rub those spotted stained parts after 30 minutes. It may not be clean but at least you have agitated the dirt agents and they are more likely to adhere with the detergent while washed in a machine.

           4-    While soaking the embellished clothes and fabric pull them inside out. Don’t rub them hard, either don’t rub or rub very very gently.

   

           5-    Make sure that you rinse properly. This consumes more water than that required for washing. So please make sure that you utilize the water. Rinsing is an act of allowing the detergent to wash away taking dirt along.

          6-     Machine dried clothes should also be dried under the sky for a while.

   

    Cotton fabric are breathing fabric, the care as you have seen so far is not difficult. We all wish to care our fabric not only for its durable use but also to get a fresh feel away from pollution every time we wear. So why not we get more out of our efforts and make our fabric safe in our hands!!

For more details, please log in www.folksmarket.com

Kindly contact us at:

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4 ways to care your Cotton Fabric Apparels & Furnishing: Folksmarekt.com

Cotton is also referred to as White Gold historically. The term is appropriate as it continues to play a dominant role since 5000 years! Archaeologist have found cloth rags in Indus Valley Civilization dated back to 3000 BC. In 1500 BC, the Rig-Veda (sacred Hindu philosophy) hymn mentioned “threads in loom” which is generally accepted to be used for Cotton. Thus it is widely believed that Cotton production started first from India. However the Egyptian Civilization and inhabitants of Peru also knew about Cotton since ages. 

 

Cotton is most widely used natural fibres throughout the world. It requires sufficient moisture and heat to mature and grow quality fibres. The fibres of Cotton are made up of cellulose. Cotton fibres are attached to seeds inside boll of plant. A boll is made up of 6-7 seeds and near about 20,000 fibres attached to each seed making number of fibres more than 100,000. The boll of the cotton plant is also known as Seed pod. Each fibre is an elongated cell that has a hollow lumen inside that allows it to breath! The adhesive quality is due to wax like outer coating.

The length of the fibre is major determinant of the quality of the cotton. Generally long staple fibres are considered to be of higher quality. Staple length is divided into short, medium and long.

è Short staple is between 0.95cm and 2.4 cm in length

è Medium staple is between 2.54 cm and 2.86 cm in length

è Long staple could be anywhere between 3 cm to 6.35 cm

Cotton buyers buy cotton on the basis of length of fibres (staple fibre), cleanliness, degree of whiteness and fibre strength. 

Imporant Long staple cotton is Egyptian Cotton and Pima Cotton. Pima Cotton is also called sometime as ELS (Extra Long Staple) Cotton. Mainly grown in Peru, South West US and Australia, this is considered to be one of the superior blends of cotton. Egyptian Cotton by far is the most fine cotton. Towels and Sheets made from 

Egyptian cotton are in great demand as they are very soft and absorbs water quickly. Pima Cotton is similar to Egyptian cotton. It has a little smaller staple than Egyptian cotton but still it can be woven into dense and soft fabric.

So what makes this fibre so special? A look at its properties will clear the air.

(Care to peek in some beautiful cotton fabric from www.folksmarket.com? Scroll till the end!)

Properties of Cotton Products

Cotton fibres are valued for its comfort, easy to handle, affordability, natural breathing of air that soothes the skin and ofcourse the ability of millions of weavers who use this nature’s gift beautifully by making fabric for apparels, home furnishing, beddings, towels and many other decorative items.

•     Comfortable: Cotton has a soft texture and there is no surface irritant that brushes with the skin.
•     Hydrophilic: Cotton absorbs moisture from our body. It has a strong affinity with water.
•     The absorbed moisture passes through the cotton and evaporates that has a cooling effect on skin.
•     Heat Conductivity: The heat conductivity of cotton is very good. This makes it dissipate heat quickly
•     Fibres are strong and not prone to abrasion
•     Fibres can be twisted, plied and stretched.

However couple of factors can also be enumerated unfavorably. Notable among them are wrinkle prone fibre and dull color.

Nonetheless with the modern technique, the producers have now overcome these difficulties. For example, cotton in its natural state shrink by 3% but if pre treated it with certain chemicals, the effect can be reduced. This is more so for the denim. 

Moreover these days market is embracing with the fabric that is cotton blended with other fibre, like Silk and Linen.

How to wash cotton

No matter how the cotton is pre-treated, contraction or shrinkage is inherent in nature of cotton. However, one can minimize the shrinkage by bit extra care and following certain guidelines.

     1- Always hand-wash the cotton fabric. This is difficult for the busy people but it essentially is the first step in fighting the shrinkage.

     2- Be it machine or hand-wash, always use the cold water rather than warm water. Hot water agitates cotton fibre

     3- After washing, stretch your fabric, gently to neutralize its shrinkage after dry.

     4- Dry your clothes in natural sunlight. Using dryer etc make cotton fabric shrink more. 

The “White Gold” may lack color and luster but still its most sought after natural fibre. The comfort of cotton is unmatched. This is evident from the fact that Cotton fabric commands the major share of textile industry globally.

To choose wide range of cotton fabric, please visit Folksmarket.com. We have one of the largest collections of fine cotton fabric (more than 350). Some of them are listed below.

Cotton + Linen by Folksmarket.com

Cotton + Silk, Zari worked by Folksmarket.com

Cotton + Silk by Folksmarket.com

Cotton + Silk by Folksmarekt.com

Cotton + Silk by Folksmarket.com

Fine Mercerized Cotton Fabric by Folksmarket.com

Pure Cotton Fabric (merc) by Folksmarket.com

Pure Cotton Fabric by Folksmarket.com

The easy to use Add to Enquiry System makes your job much easier and convenient. You don’t need to hop in different pages to see your fabric. The entire product can be navigated quickly and with lesser hassles. 

(Folksmarket.com also offers blended cotton fabric; cotton-silk, cotton-jute, cotton-linen are all displayed in our website.)

What more?? All the technical and commercial information is readily available in your first click. Literally!!

For more enquiry, you may drop us a mail, shakti@folksmarket.com or subhash@folksmarket.com or Folksmarket@gmail.com

You can call us @ +91-9899275917/+91-9630338767/+91-9818170427

Cotton Fabric Producers,Traders wake up with shock - Folksmarket.com

The farmers, traders, importer-exporter wake up this morning with the shock of the plummeted price of the cotton. Global price of the cotton crashed significantly from the March 2011 last year. Owing to the forecast of bigger crops and waning demand have pushed down US cotton price from $2.2 per pound to $0.96/pound, which roughly translates to current price of INR 119/Kg from INR 420/Kg. 

Expected increase in Cotton Imports

The abrupt lowering of the price has generated an irresistible urge to increase the import of Cotton. Many textile companies cater to the world market which prefers cotton from US, Egypt and Australia. The cotton of these countries is finer in count and impurity free than the Indian cotton because of solid mechanization process in these countries. India is world’s second largest cotton producing country in the world. Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh account for 90% of the total cotton production in India.

The price scenario now supports the import strategy of the textile companies as the price of the cotton in India today is INR 94/Kg, still lower than the global price of INR 119/Kg. 

After forex adjustments this price will be lower by 10% or less. As long as Indian textile companies receive a margin of 10% in the global rate, they will continue importing more. The superior cotton of US is greater in demand. The industry source confirmed that the excitement among Indian textile companies for imported cotton will last as long as the price differential is less than 10%.

Impact on Farmers

After a sharp rise in cotton production for two successive years, the decreased price will have a disastrous impact over the cotton production in India and Pakistan. Already there is a decline in number of hectares cultivated for cotton from last year. In Gujarat for example the total cultivation area for cotton was 3 million hectares last year which is going to decrease by atleast 500,000 hectares this year. Similarly the Pakistani farmers are also apprehensive about the sowing cotton this year because of the price decline. Though the cotton growth in the two countries take place in contrasting policies yet the result for India and Pakistani farmers remain tricky and at times dangerous. The complete ban proposed by central govt and executing partial ban on cotton export and abundance of illegal seed in the two countries pushed the farmers on the brink of hand to mouth situation.

Govt lacks will

The farmers are marred by the lax regulatory regime and absence of much needed structural transformation in both these countries. And now since the seed price has crashed from the last year price, the farmers will be less averse to grow cotton and look for other alternative to get better results from their investment. The lopsided cotton policy has already forced the farmers to sell their cotton at INR 32,000 per candy (355.5 Kg) against the same at INR 62,000 per candy they sold at, last year. Early trend suggest that there will be a minimum of 15% decline in the cotton production in these two countries.

Chinese aggression

China has taken the advantage of this fluid situation. China shocked the market by huge purchase of cotton from the US. Though China is world’s largest consumer of cotton and buying steadily since March 2011 but given the scale of its purchase close to 94% of net cotton export sales from US (795,700 bales) [1 bale = 170 Kg] is not in proportion to the huge demand back in China. The analyst fears that new purchase is meant for the strategic reserves of China and not the demand from apparel manufacturing. 

"Demand in China is anemic, but the reserve continues to buy to take advantage of lower prices for cotton," said Robert Antoshak, managing director of apparel maker and consultancy Olah Inc., which designs and produces apparel for Gap Inc. GPS +1.17%and Ann Inc. ANN +1.89%"They don't want to get caught buying expensive cotton again." [Source: Wall Street Journal]

The fear of lower price and increasing supplies in the coming year (beginning Aug 2012) starts surfacing. 

Road Ahead

The coming months may not see a decline in the order of cotton but the revenues are certainly going to be lesser. With the high import of cotton by the textile companies looming, the worst affected are the traditional cotton producing farmers who may either have to settle for less export price or reduced demand in domestic market.

The already tottered economy has suffered yet another blow and most of the countries govt including India and Pakistan have no strategy to counter. Govt has to be proactive to see how it can maintain a balance between the global market situation and cotton growing farmers.

May be by incentivizing the cotton fabric producers and popularizing the demand of cotton fabric both domestic and internationally. The moment calls for an out of the box solution.

[Check www.folksmarket.com)