From a village loom to a family name

1. Late 1980s · Vastadi

   Long days at the hand loom

   In his home village of Vastadi, Premjibhai started out weaving simple fabrics by hand, beginning early every morning and working through the day.

2. Ratanpar

   Discovering Patola

   Moving to Ratanpar brought him into the company of skilled Patola weavers. Captivated by how beautiful, and how difficult, the craft was, he chose to learn it and give himself to it completely.

3. Bombay

   Woven for renowned stores

   He carried the finished sarees to well-known stores in Bombay himself, including Benzer and Amarsons.

4. Growing

   More looms, more cities

   As more people came to love Patola, the family added handlooms and began selling in Ahmedabad and other cities.

Three stages, every one by hand

Patola is one of the slowest and most exacting textile arts in India. None of it can be hurried, and each stage relies on the one before it.

1. Preparing the silk Raw silk yarn from Bangalore is boiled several times until it's ready for weaving, then wound into vankala and laid out as pati to match the size of the piece.
2. Marking the design on the threads The threads are stretched across a rectangular wooden frame called an adda. Following traditional graph patterns, every motif is marked and planned on the threads themselves before weaving begins.
3. Two weavers, one loom Each loom is worked by two people: one weaves while the other aligns the pattern, thread by thread. Every inch has to line up perfectly.

Why Patola takes so long

Because every thread is planned before it's woven, the time a piece spends on the loom depends on how intricate its design is.

Bringing the craft to a new generation

Patola Dupatta carries this heritage forward, sharing the family's decades of experience with a new generation of customers in India and around the world. Every dupatta reflects years of practice and the skill of Indian handloom weaving.