Sari lovers visit village of weavers

The members of a Facebook group called ‘Saree in Style’ visited Kodiyala on July 7 and promoted their love for handloom saris. There were 23 members who participated in the event and learnt about the lives of handloomers there.

Saree in Style was initiated by Jaseeena Backer in November 2016 and there were about 9,300 members. Their first meet in Bengaluru took place last month where the members decided that they wanted to do more for the handloom community.

Preetha S, one of the members, shared with Metrolife about the handloom visit. She says, “The loom and village tour was arranged by Shilpa Mungavalasa and Sudha Rao took care of the transportation. We left here by 6.30 am and reached Kodiyala by 9 am. We even packed breakfast and lunch with us.”

When they reached there, they first visited the powerloom where they were briefed on the process. “The segregated cotton and silk yarns based on the sari design are sent to Bengaluru city to be arranged on the warp beam. It’s only then that these beams, based on various designs, are set on the weaving looms,” says Preetha.

There were about five machines each for cotton and silk saris and it takes about three hours to weave one sari. That is two to three saris in a day, but because this is powerloom, there is a minimum manual effort.

The day also took them to visit the one and only weaver in the village who is still practising the labour-intensive skill. He is known as the master weaver and the handloom unit is the next door to the residence. He has about five trainees who are learning the weaving process.

The first step is to conceptualise a design for the sari. The master sketches the design on a sheet of paper and he uses the computer to complete colouring it. With the design in hand, the yarn colours are selected based on the type of sari — cotton or silk — which are done in two separate weaving pits.

Used as weft, the selected yarns are wound through traditional ‘charkha’. each pirn has a yarn wound of a maximum of two inches in size. These shuttles are loaded onto a wooden frame and the threads are fed through wooden rollers of the warping machinery and rolled.

Preetha says, “It was interesting to watch how it takes so much manual effort to produce one sari. We saw that the wooden vertical-shaft looms are powered by hand and the warp threads pass alternately through the heddle and through a space between the heddles so that the threads passing through the spaces remain in place. The loom parameters like correct warp tension, the proper opening of shed, reed movement and so on have to be precise for the whole process to work.”
Buying from the weavers directly ensures authenticity which cannot is not the case at the shops.

“It was wonderful to see that no machine can match the love, care and craftmanship of a weaver who crisscrosses every bundle of thread through his skilful fingers. All of his work is nothing less than a masterpiece,” she adds.

Though the group planned to purchase many saris, they could only buy 30 of them as the stock of saris were less. The team hopes to spread this initiative to other states and help our weavers in the future.

How they do it
The weaving begins with the sari blouse, followed by the pallu and then the body of the sari. For a double-shaded silk sari, two coloured shuttle threads are used. For its Butta design, the coloured threads are separated at equidistant the golden thread is rotated around these coloured threads.

Quality check
It’s the weaver’s responsibility to check the shed opening by false picking and reed movement by false beating. The warp is generally 100 counts but the fineness of the sari depends on the weft count. The best quality is 140 count, however, a thread count of 100 and 120 are considered medium and good quality respectively. The lower counts of 80 and 60 are
used for dhotis and 60 and 40 for towels.

Did you know?
- The handwoven sari is 6 to 6.5 yards with a width of 45 to 48 inch. If you’ve noticed, over a period of time, the handloom sari’s border or the body tends to wear out but the pallu remains intact because the threads are rolled on it.
- It takes three hours to make a sari using powerloom but it takes a week to complete a handloom sari. Depending on how intricate the designs are, one to three people works on one sari.

Easy on the pocket
Cotton handloom saris are priced at Rs 1,500 and silk saris at Rs 5,000 when sourced from the weavers directly. However, by the time it reaches the city’s stores, the price is almost
tripled.