Handwoven cotton from Maheshwar

Our weaving journey began in the Spring of 2022, during an apprenticeship in Maheshwar with a first generation weaver, Nisha Verma. We dabbled in all the processes, from warping and bobbin winding to drafting and denting. It’s in the final process – sitting at the loom and weaving – that the fabric is birthed and the weaver feels a sense of making something.

Sampling is an intuitive process that takes the craft technique into account. Weaving together stripes of different colours, experimenting with varying widths, and even making rookie weaving mistakes such as breaking yarn can result in an exploration (in this case, leaving out yarn at irregular intervals on purpose, to give the fabric texture).

We were keen on working with non-mercerised cotton yarn for this collection, which proved to be quite difficult. Mercerization is a wet chemical process that’s usually at the final stage of processing (after the cotton is spun, twisted, combed, and gassed). This process is done to strengthen the yarn – particularly for fine yarn – and it leaves the yarn smooth, and somewhat lustrous. We wanted to skip this process, not only to avoid the chemical process on the yarn, but primarily because we wanted to retain the natural characteristics of cotton that get stripped away with mercerization. Natural cotton has more texture, a better drape, and the hairy microfibres are what make this fabric breathe better than it’s lustrous, smooth, mercerised counterpart.

The textiles for this collection were produced largely at the workshops of Nisha Verma and Karghewale, an organisation working closely with craftspeople with their head office in Maheshwar.

To read about our weaving projects in Maheshwar in more detail, head here.

All our textiles have been washed to test for colour bleeding and to guarantee zero shrinkage. It does help to dry your clothes in the shade to avoid the bleaching effect of the harsh sunlight.