Preparation of the Loom

Drafting

The process of passing the warp yarn through the heald of the loom as per the design to be woven is known as drafting. This helps in the further process of weaving when locating a broken yarn becomes easy due to the heald and also helps in the designing processes.

Denting

The reed, a comb like structure, locally known as ‘raanch’, is filled with the yarns by skilled craftsmen on their own or through the men adept at this skill. The reed is made of a special variety of bamboos found only near Benaras.

Piecing

Since the process of denting is quite laborious and time-consuming, its usually done either on a new loom or in case if the design is changed. Otherwise, just new yarns are added to the left over yarns in the reed to continue weaving. This process of joining the warp yarns, with the help of the thumb and the index finger, using some ash in the process, is known as piecing.

Design Setting

The setting up of design on the ‘jala’ of the loom is also a specialized activity and so is that of making of the graphs for the designs. The use of dobby of up to 16 plates and jacquards of up to 100 hooks are also being used in Kaithun, the total number of dobbys being about 25-30 while about 50 odd jacquards are in operation. Dobby is mainly used for ground motifs and in some instances for the pallu also. On the other hand, jacquard is being used for making exquisite borders of the saris. The method of using small spindles, locally known as ‘tillis’ for making the motif on the ground/pallu/border of the sari makes the designing process quite lengthy but at the same time provides such a fine effect, which is not noticed in any other handloom sari easily.

The Weaving

Weaving is done mostly in pit looms using throw shuttle technique having immense potential for improvisation for improvisation. The designs are transformed onto the fabric using Dobby, jacquards or by using an innocuous Jala.