Different types of Indian handloom fabric by Folksmarket.com

Hi Folks, how many different types of fabric you have seen so far? I m sure many but its not always that you pay attention to these different kinds of fabric which you use almost on a daily basis. 

Before coming into field, I have never paid attention while my mom used to sew any clothes but as soon as I m introduced to this amazing world of fabric now everything changes suddenly. One becomes more interested in knowing while looking at any clothing as what kind of fabric is it? Is it a handmade or machine made? Natural or Man Made and so on..

While visiting to any clothing shop you would have heard the shopkeeper naming different fabric varieties, organza, muslin, chiffon, denim and so on.

 
(Log in to www.folksmarket.com to choose from one of the biggest  handloom  fabric collection)

 
In this section of our conversation, we wish to briefly touch upon different types of fabric. This should come handy to you while you go to a shop for purchase or window shopping. You should be able to appreciate different fabric and choose the one that suits your need in best way.

Well fabric is any woven (hand or machine) finished product from the yarns. It is complete in the sense of its ready to use after cutting and stitching. The different stages for the handloom fabric from natural fibres can be broadly categorized as

Cultivation of fibres --> Spinning of the fibres into yarn --> Dyeing --> Weaving --> Cutting and Stitching (including embroidery, zari etc) --> Washing --> Ready to use

Although in between any two stages, there are many more steps involved and there are separate mills and industries involve even for a single stage, yet in general it is suffice to know the above multi-stages of fabric production

Fabrics are formed from various raw materials available in nature or artificially made in labs or a mix of both.

Natural fabrics are those which are made from the animal furs (wool), plant seeds (cotton), cocoons of silk worm (silk), leaves and stems (jute and hemp). Synthetic fabrics are made from organic or inorganic materials combined with chemicals.

Among natural fabric and synthetic, the clear winner in totality is definitely Natural fabrics. It is breathable (due to presence of air packets in wool for example) and very skin friendly. It hardly changes its color from UV light and as long as the tensile strength of fabric is maintained, it will never be warmed. Synthetic fabrics are made in most of the cases for mass demand and more strength.

Lets take a look at important types of fabric

In this post we are publishing types of Natural Fabric. The Synthetic Fabric varieties will be covered in our next blog post

Cotton Fabric

Cotton Fabric by Folksmarket.com

Its an all season fabric and most widely used. From apparels to home furnishing to the industrial purpose, cotton finds their place almost everywhere. They are skin-friendly and possesses and amazing quality of keeping your body cool in summer and warm in winter.

Silk Fabric

Silk Fabric by Folksmarket.com

 Contrary to the general perception, silk fabric is one of the strongest natural fabric. It is known for its luster, beauty and affluent look. It is one of the high grade fabric and provides comfort to its user. Like cotton it too has the quality of keeping you warm in winter and cool in summer. Silk maintenance is bit expensive as compared to other fabric

Linen Fabric

Linen Fabric by Folksmarket.com

 One of its striking characteristic is resistant to allergies. Also known as King of all fabric, Linen is used for apparels, home furnishing and automobile industry. Its very easy to maintain and can be hand-washed.

Wool Fabric

Wool Fabric by Folksmarket.com

 The basic purpose of the wool is to keep you warm. Imagine the Musk-ox who thrives in glaciers of arctic. What made them possible in living in such an extreme weather? It’s the qiviut or under hair of the musk-ox. The wool fabrics are soft strong and very durable fabric.

Leather Fabric

 Obtained and made from the skin of animals, the Leather fabric has unique quality of absorbing the water vapours without losing the dryness. It is also stretchable and doesnot loose its shape on stretching. Although there are many ethical issues that engulfed the Leather Fabric, still its popular among folks!

 Most of the time, the Leather Fabric are not woven using handloom, therefore at Folksmarket.com, we do not deal in Leather Fabric.


Hemp Fabric

 Hemp is obtained from the stem of the plants. Italy is known to have the finest hemp in the world. They are durable, absorbs water well than any other natural fabric and possess insulation quality. 

Environmentally they are called as Super Fibre, they are made from the herbaceous plant that has high yield. Hemp fabric are soft and most suitable for the apparels that withstand harsh conditions. They are used for clothing, curtains, draperies, upholstery, bed spreads, table linens etc.

Jute Fabric

Jute Fabric by Folksmarket.com

 Jute is very strong and durable fabric. Since ages they are the preferred choice of sacks and bags. Now a days they are finding enough popularity in fashion industry. Lots of fashion accessories, footwear etc are made from the jute. India is the second largest producer of Jute after Bangladesh.

Carpets, Linoleum, Cordages and Twines are made majorly from Jute. They are traditionally been important fibres for the industry. It is sometimes used as webbing to cover the inner springs of the auto seats.

To be continued for Synthetic Fabrics in our next blog...

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

Kindly contact us at:

folks@folksmarket.com

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

Wide range of Handloom Fabric in Folksmarket.com

Check out our rich and wide collection of handloom fabric and ofcourse our strength in this short video. Handmade Fabric surely are the future fabric. The dominant features of Handloom Fabric are its uniqueness, variations and skin adaptation. The Handloom Fabric literally breathes on air, this is the reason why they are so skin friendly. Folks pay attention!!

The rich collection of handloom fabric is depicted through this video. We purposefully made it short, just 41 seconds. Around 40 different collection of fabric ranging from Cotton, Silk, Cotton-Silk, Linen, Woolen etc have been taken for this video. You can peek through the Folksmarket.com in just 41 seconds. Why to wait further?? Here is the video and enjoy. (Folks if you like it please do not forget to recommend or share it..)

For our B2B clients, we have designed special feature: Add to Enquiry. This feature will allow them to send multiple enquiries in just one click without a single need to remember the information. They can also track the order status at their convenient place and time from My Account Tab. To know more about this feature, read our previous blog Handloom Fabric buyers find it easy with Folksmarket.com

For more information, please log on to www.folksmarket.com

You may wish to write to us folks@folksmarket.com

Handloom Fabric Buyers may find it easier with Folksmarket.com

It is often seen that many B2B clients who are interested in the products and wish to enquire about the same, run through a lot of inconvenience while choosing those products which enticed them.

Problems faced by B2B Fabric Buyers

Most of the websites either have one contact page that asks for detail information like Name, Address, Company Name, Telephone number and a message box every time a product is enquired or the client has to choose for each product one by one, fill in detail and send, again and yet again.

So lets say that if I, as a B2B client, wish to enquire about 10 different fabrics from 4 different sub category, I need to remember the product characteristics, its name going back and forth and then fill in those details followed by the message which may be like “I want to have the sample of Product Code xyz, 200 mtr order of fabric for product code abc, for product code def I have written message as “you said you can produce only 500 mtr in a month, but I am supposed to deliver 500 mtr of finished product in 30 days, how will I be able to work it out?..etc”

The problem faces by the client in such scenario are:

n  Remembering so many product item is such a pain

n  If he clears the hurdle number 1, the next hurdle is remembering the Commercial Specifications that tells about the product capacity, minimum order quantity and expected order time. For 10 products, it look like remembering 30 different piece of information

n  Assuming the user has a sharp memory, he remembers well everything. But again, he needs to fill in the details specific for each product based on its Commercial information.

n  What if suddenly the Boss ask hey Mike, go in for Silk fabric also, we might have a client looking for the best Silk fabrics. Ohh no man, baffled Mike frustrates, ‘how come the boss is so cold to my existing problem of enquiring products. I can’t copy and paste the information because even this exercise I need to do 10 times now 15 times for the same number of different products?? What a pain!!

n  To add to the list of already existing inconveniences, now Silk has a count system different from Cotton and Linen, how the hell am I going to remember the Technical Specifications?

This is a perennial problem faces by almost all the website operating into B2B category. To address such issue, we at Folksmarket.com utilized our tech resource to program in such a way that through one click, any user can enquire for the multiple products.

Uniqueness of www.folksmarket.com

At folksmarket.com, we believe in giving all the information to the client in our website itself that eases out the process. We have divided the fabric section information into 2 parts; Technical Specifications and Commercial Specifications. 

While the Technical Specification educate the client about the Yarn Count, Reed Count, Picks per Inch, Commercial Specifications, on the other hand, indicates what could be the timelines for a specific order to meet. Now with this specific and varied information, it is pertinent for us to develop a system that can allow our prospective clients to enquire for multiple products without the hassle of memorizing any detail. 

Add to Enquiry System of folksmarket.com

Our client can send us the enquiry through two easy yet effective steps:

1-      Sign up first; it just takes around 100 seconds.

2-      Starts browsing through different products/fabrics, read all the details, choose the items he wishes to enquire about and keep on adding there itself without leaving the page!!

The Counter System will keep on informing as to how many products they have added so far. Once they are done with, just click on Send an Enquiry, the next page they will be in, displays all the products list wise. Now just fill in details like Order Quantity, Expected Timeline and any message unique for each product. Once they send it to us, we will be in position to know what kind of demand and product our client is interested in. This facilitates in saving lot of time for our fabric buyers.

My Account

What more, all the enquired products are stored in Buyer’s Account which he can refer any time he wishes to. Now this My Account tab is one of the most convenient post enquiry features of www.folksmarket.com. There is a status bar that shows the status of the work as processing, complete, closed. The text box at the end of Enquiry details let you know about the detailed status of the work and payment details. 

Our aim is to minimize the conversation back and forth between us and client about the work. The client may update himself about the work progress at any hour the day.

Customer first

This Enquiry Adding page is the beta version of our Enquiry system. There are many more features that will be added in Add to Enquiry Section and websites as whole. The objective is to increase the status updating conversation between client and Folksmarket.com team. This however does not mean that we don’t believe in communication! We love to speak with our users and clients but just want to save the inconvenience. 

Our team member from Tech Team, Narendra, deserves special accolades. Keep up good work buddy.

(PS: This piece is not written to denigrate other organizations. Aim is simply to highlight the issue )