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...

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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

King of Wool, Shahtoosh- The Indian Handloom Fabric by Folksmarket.com

(Check www.folksmarket.com)

The origin of Shahtoosh fabric to India is widely debated. Some viewed it to come from Tibet, some Mongolia and large section of historians are of the view that it was introduced to India by Mirza Mohammad Haida Dughlat, the Kashmir ruler during 1540-41.

Shahtoosh or “King of fine wool” (Persian) is mostly used for a specific types of Shawl made from the underhair of a Tibetan Antelope, popularly called as Chiru (Pantholops hodgsonii). Chirus are inhabitant of Tibet.  

Chiru are timid, vegetarian and delicate antelope, found in desolate vastness of the Tibet, Xinjiang and Ladakh regions and they migrate to Ladakh in summer and remain there from May to July. They live in one of the harshest condition at an altitude of over 5000 mtrs. The antelope Chiru develops a down hair in severe winters which protects it from cold weather and harsh cold condition. Later when the temperature goes up and normalize they then shed their wools. People or tribe falling Chirus then collect the wools and bring it to market. Sometimes Ladakhi peasants follow the Chiru through the mountain and pick the woolen fibre from bushes on which animals happen to snag themselves up.            

The fur is very light, fluffy and extremely warm. According to folklore of Kashmiris, an egg wrapped with Shahtoosh could boil it if kept in sunlight for an hour!!. Well there is no scientific validation to this fact, but it underlines how extreme warm wool fibre, Shahtoosh is. 

The delicate under hair is very fine, measured between 9-11 microns. They are so fine that an average fabric of 7 yards by 1.5 yards can be passed through the wedding ring! At first this sounds elusive like an Indian rope trick. But unlike the Indian rope trick this is very much tested and it does exist. When woven into a shawl, Shahtoosh looks like an ordinary shawl, till the time you feel it! It has a smoothness of silk. Once put in your hand in Shawl you feel like putting your hand in a cloud.

This incredibly fineness makes it virtually impossible to handle and this is where the weavers with their experience in handling one of the finest combed wool, Pashmina, has a role to play. Like Pashmina they could weave shawls from Shahtoosh and thus Shahtoosh shawl born. The weavers in Kashmir are so deft and skilled that they can even embroider over these shawls. This is so difficult even for Kashmiri weavers and they have to do it by starching it first. 

Shahtoosh-shawl making requires special looms and skill set which some of the Kashmiri weavers have been carrying since centuries. Kashmir enjoys the privilege of being the only region in India and world-over with the proficiency and adroitness to weave and spin Shahtoosh. Weaving is mostly done by the Kashmiri men and spinning by women. It is they who turn the humble, tangled bundles of raw wool into the miracle of Shahtoosh. It takes months from the arrival of clump wool to prepare a 7 yard shawl that consumes around 6 Pound of wool.

No wonder such shawls can cost you sometimes a million bug (Indian Currency, INR). Many locals still treat this fabric a must for their wardrobe. Shahtoosh shawls could be Plain as well as Embroidered. The cost of the Plain shawl is mostly determined by the percentage of Shahtoosh wool in it. As the wool is very fine, it is mixed with Cotton. Silk thread is used for embroidery.The colour of Shahtoosh is white, grey, etc but it is the white which is more expensive among most expensives!

Popularity of King of Wool

British traders should be credited with increasing the popularity index of Shahtoosh shawl for the world outside India. When they travelled to Kashmir, India during summer season, they realized the worth of Shahtoosh and introduced it to the world. In India, it being expensive, majorly was consumed by the Royals and Aristocrats. The Shahtoosh shawl is now a global name but is extremely popular in countries like France, Italy, Germany and other Western European countries. These countries are trendsetters in modern Fashion industries. Many folks of these countries treat this as must for Bride’s wardrobe. 

Global ban in Shahtoosh Fabric trading

As the modern consumerism grows the demand of Shahtoosh fabric, the traders stopped waiting for the antelope to shed its wool. Rather they started killing them. Chiru has, thus, become target for the poachers.

"It takes five dead Chirus to make one shahtoosh shawl," Poorva Joshipura, chief functionary of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) India, told IANS.

Relentless and unchecked poaching caused this innocent and timid animal to come down from more than a million at the start of 20^th century to about 150,000.

As a result that Shahtoosh trade was banned in Year 1975 globally under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to which India is also a signatory. Indian govt woke up late in 1991 and banned it. Jammu and Kashmir govt had stayed away till it banned its sales in 2000. Eventually in May 2002, the state government outlawed Shahtoosh production, bringing its laws at par with Indian and International laws that prohibited trade in shahtoosh products.

The killing of the Chiru, a Schedule I animal according to the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, is banned in India. The law is strict and states that processing or wearing shahtoosh is a punishable offence. The punishment includes hefty fines and even sending behind bar for those who carry the shawls. ‘In Jammu and Kashmir, the imprisonment for killing a Chiru is one to three years, with a proposed fine of Rs.5,000 to Rs.25,000,’ says Bashir Ahmed War, retired senior veterinarian of the Jammu and Kashmir Animal Husbandry department.

Impact of Ban over Shahtoosh Fabric weavers

Banning has not vanished its demands altogether. The King of wool and wool of King’s demand is not easy to fall. It has no alternative. Therefore even after the ban on Shahtoosh trade is effective for more than two decades, it still being smuggled from China, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. The raw material is imported secretly from China and Nepal, processed and woven into a shawl and sold.

But this ban comes with a price. Many Kashmiri weavers who are traditionally into this business feel the ban has done collateral damage. To work with ultrafine wool (9-11 microns) and produce superb fabric is not only their pride but also livelihood. "We have been hurt the most. The ban has been a kick on our stomachs. We have pleaded to the government of India to rethink the ban. But it has mostly fallen on deaf ears," Gawhar Maqbool, a wool exporter from Srinagar, told IANS. Gawhar Maqbool is among those 45,000 -50,000 families who are severely hit by the ban. The demand of Shahtoosh is reportedly come down to 25% of what it used to be during pre-banned years.

This is a perennial dilemma for Govt who need to fine tune between the environmental balances and livelihood of the affected families. The talk of rehabilitating those weavers into Pashmina is a successful step taken by Govt. Both Pashmina weaving and Shahtoosh require fine and skilled weaving. The Wildlife Trust of India is reportedly doing excellent work in this rehabilitation process. It envisioned a high-quality hand-made pashmina, using traditional techniques, as an alternative to shahtoosh for the producers as well as for their customers. Kudos to such initiative

Ray of Hope

The global effort to save this endangered antelope is paying rich dividend. A global wildlife trade monitoring network, confirmed that according to a survey reported by Chinese news agency Xinhua there is an increase in the number of endangered Chirus in Tibet.

The population of the endangered antelopes in Tibet registered a double increase from 75000 in late 1980s. The survey was comprehensive and lasted for 18 years in Tibet. For the past 6 years this rare antelope is growing by 7.9% annually.

Lessons for Shahtoosh Fabric Consumers and Traders- "Save Chiru"

What Every Prospective Shatoosh-buyer Should Know is the fact that furtive trading done is possible only because people are still purchasing it either out of ignorance or for brazen disrespect to our nature.

Those who accepts the claim of collecting the wool from the bushes needs to know that there are only paltry or no bushes at 5000 mtr height. One shawl thus means, killing 5-7 Chiru as they have never captured alive as far as we know. Even their domestication process is not much researched upon.

We must be responsible with our fashion and wardrobe as well. Next time you wear a Shahtoosh shawl just think that you are carrying corpses of 5-7 Chirus who are punished for being sweet and delicate to the nature.

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Write us at folks@folksmarket.com )