Jute Cotton Bag - Bijapur, Karnataka
The bag making starts with the weaving of hundred percent jute or Hybrid of Jute Cotton fabrics. In jute fabric, jute threads are used both in horizontal and vertical stitching, in jute cotton, jute is used in horizontal fashion (in shuttles of loom) to hide the roughness, and to give a detailed finish through cotton thread overlaying, jute cotton fabric is in more demand because cotton can be easily dyed in numerous color options and fine smooth texture feel.
Jute & Cotton threads comes readymade according to required size, quantity & color to the weaving center, as almost all the fabric made now a days is of hybrid of jute & cotton, jute is used inside the interlacing of cotton threads. Both jute and cotton thread which comes in bundles are processed as follows to feed into the hand loom:
Jute:
Huge reels of jute thread is fed into charkha. Which helps it to unwind from a bigger lot to shift to a much smaller reel, called “Pirn” which is fed into shuttle of handloom. Jute used here is generally soft to use, and is bit thicker than thread. Which provides durability.
Cotton:
Cotton thread comes in yarn type bundle, which is also fed into charkha to create bobbin with cotton yarn. Numbers of these cotton thread bobbins are placed in a long wooden stands, which makes up a “Creel” which is then rolled onto a warp beam to create a seamless parallel bunch of threads, rolled on a roller (beam lad), it is placed on a handloom machine, and this process collectively is called as “warping”. From there individual thread is drawn into two sets of heddle shaft, later on passing into the reed, which prevents the tangling of threads while weaving. Heddle shaft is connected to a foot-operated pedal which while pedaling lifts up alternate heddle shaft which in turn lifts alternate half of the cotton threads, during this process a gap is created between two heddle shafts and shuttle (which is carrying jute thread) travels to lay out jute thread, which then is locked by “Beater”, the completed part of weaving is collected by cloth roller placed on weaver’s side simultaneously. This process continues at a greater speed to produce continues length of fabric as per required width and length.
The completed fabric is then distributed among different villages nearby; to make a laundry basket the fabrics is rolled to form a cylinder and are hand stitched near the joining. It is given a lining from inside with rough jute cloth to give it rigidness and cotton lining on top of it for smooth user-friendly surface. One end of the basket is closed with the same fabric, cut into circular form and is stitched around the edges, forming the lower end of basket. To the upper end two leather handles are added on opposite ends, along with a rope lining to form rigid support, which can withstand maximum weight, and is hand stitched in similar fashion.
An optional cloth pouch kind lining is given from inside which can be closed & opened with pulling the threads attached to it.
