In India, handlooms have contributed a major share in traditional art form. With textile tours, you get the opportunity to explore various centers of textile industry, all across India. While being on the tour, you will get the clear glimpses of rich Indian culture. Every region of India is connected with their respective traditional crafts.
Gujarat and Rajasthan, the ancient textile tie & dye practice, are celebrated for the Bandhani. Thus, these textiles are very popular and sought-after.
In this region, you may find the women wearing bandhani saris and garments. The tiny little dots in various beautiful and intricate patterns reflect the skills of bandhani artists. The artisans apply wax or use cotton thread to make knots and provide resistance to the pattern on the fabric. To make the knot, the artisans use seed of various sizes. Thereafter, the tied fabric is immersed in dyes for a long duration. The dye is unable to go through the knots and thus, helps in creating an amazing wearable work of tie and dye art.
In Gujarat, Kutch is celebrated for its 16 different types of embroideries. These embroideries reflect the significance of their respective communities. Through these embroideries you may, at times, provided the glimpses of occupation, religion and location of the people. The embroidery designs include animals, birds and flowers. You may find embroidery on clothes, saris, hats, shawls, quilts, purses, etc. During your trip, you are certainly going to face difficulties in deciding the best amongst the amazing embroideries to purchase them as souvenirs.
The elegant saris and handlooms in the collection are certainly from the weavers of Orissa. The traditional village of Orissa, Nuapatna, is known for the skills of the weavers. The tussah or the tussar variety of silk is used by the weavers to weave home furnishings.
For the production of Silk, intensive labor is required. The villagers put their dexterous efforts to get the strong, lustrous and lightweight threads, able to absorb dyes. The children in the village collect the cocoons of the silkworms and place them in hot water. Through this way, the worms get killed and the loose filaments are twined together to form a single strand of thread. In the local dialect (Oriya), this process is called as 'Janga'.
The locally produced silk is woven according to the age-old local traditions. Alternatively, the silk textiles are also regarded as the sign of the social status. For the weaving of the silk textiles, various techniques like Ikat, Tapestry and supplementary thread patterning weave are used.
The time taking technique of Ikat has earned popularity to Orissa. Indigo and other natural dyes have been used in the textiles since the prehistoric times. Although, the chemical dyes are nowadays becoming very popular. The threads are horizontally dyed before weaving them into textile. The threads are arranged on a frame for dying. Tape is tied on the parts where dying is not required. Thereafter, the thread is removed from the frame and dipped into the color. During the second color dye, the tape is removed and placed on the other part for protection. This traditional technique is several thousand years old.
The world famous Ikat textiles could be bought from the government co-operative shops as well as the main bazaars of Bhubaneshwar, the capital city.
With the textile tours, Indian Holiday welcomes you to indulge in the experience of joy while watching the processing of silk fabric and savor the bandhani style fabrics in the color of your choice.
