Design Resource
Bhujodi Shawl Weaving - Kutch, Gujarat
Stole for Elegance
by
Prof. Bibhudutta Baral and Amulya S.
Making Process
Shearing of the sheep for raw wool is taken place at local villages in and around Kutch. Then raw wool is dry cleaned and then it is sent to make a yarn. The wool is drafted, rove and spun on the traditional spinning wheel to make a yarn thread. The spinning of the yarn is made with the help of charka were an artisan is turning the spinning wheel in right hand and in left hand he is holding roving wool and twisting it to make a yarn which is rolling to a spinning wheel needle. Once the yarn is made it is segregated into two types one is weft yarn and other is warp yarn.
The taana (warp) is made with the help of warp frame and then street sizing is done were all the strands of the yarn is starched with the paste (kanji) made of wheat flour and water with little detergent added for sticky surface. Then it is stretched, separated and brushed in the open ground early morning before the sunrise with the help of shed sticks and stands. The starch is supposed to dry by cool wind breeze only thus is process is done early in the morning. Until the starch is not dried the yarns keep breaking. The broken strands are tangled once again. Drying the threads get stronger. It takes more than an hour to two hours for this process to happen.
600 yarn strands are used on the warp beam of the loom for woolen shawl whereas for silk it is 1000 yarn strands on the warp beam of the loom. The warp threads are attached to the old warp yarns in the loom by fastening the yarns with the help of ash and water. The threads are joined in an alternate pattern one on the upper warp and other on the lower warp. Thus the loom beam is loaded with the warp. The next process is baana (weft) process.
Weft yarns are also starched and dyed with required colors and winded into the pirns and spindles which is loaded to fly shuttle and it becomes a weft process where weaving is obtained. The handloom contains multiple processes for a successful weaving. An artisan should do multiple chore like paddling the shafts, moving the flying shuttle through and fro in one hand, moving the reed beater in tightening the previous weave and eyes are cautiously seeing the process in order to avoid errors. Dyeing is done with either chemical colors in vat dyes method or vegetable dyes.
Handloom contains many internal mechanism equipment like heddles, shafts, shed, reed or beaters. Heddles are the tiny metal cord or wire with an eye opening where every yarn of the warp threads are passed through it individually and shaft (paddles) are interconnected below the heddles where both work simultaneously to produce a warp shift according to the designs and patterns which results in weft process. Shed is a wooden stick used in bifurcating the two layers of warp upper layer and lower layer. Once the warps are bifurcated the weft yarn is weaved with the help of bobbin of yarn in fly shuttle. Traditional Kutchi designs and motifs are weaved separately with other colored yarns which is called eccentric wefts. After a complete row of eccentric weft a normal single weft is made in order to lock the previously weaved weft. Once the shawl is completely weaved it is then sent to finishing like making fringes and tassels with the extra warp yarns in it. Usually women of the house takes up this work of making beautiful fringes to the shawl.
Flow Chart:
