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Yarn Counts
Muslin Jamdanis are textiles woven with muslin
yarns following the jamdani hand-weaving
technique thus presenting the marriage of two
exalted traditional Indian textile expressions.
Muslin yarns are yarns that are hand-spun and
have a count of above 100; this means that just
10 grams of cotton is hand-spun to a length of
1000 metres. A finer count means that a lower
amount of cotton is spun into the same length of
1000 metres. The yarn count distinguishes Muslin
Jamdani from Khadi: Khadi is also hand-woven
with hand-spun yarns, however the count of these
yarns is below 100, that is more than 10 grams
of cotton used for hand-spinning 1000 metres of
Khadi yarn.
We speak of muslin yarn count just like we speak
of the purity of gold. Just as 24k gold is the
purest, 500-count yarn is the purest, which means
that just two grams of cotton has been spun into
1000 metres yarn resulting in a very very fine yarn.
When this yarn is used for weaving it results in
a very fine fabric. In past centuries, fine muslins
were woven for royalty and export; in fact a
feather-light saree woven by my grandfather is at
the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
The jamdani weaving technique involves hand-
weaving on a wooden pit loom. The warp yarns are
set on the loom, and the weaver creates the ground
fabric by throwing the shuttle through the shed of
the warp yarns. The motifs are created by manually
interlacing supplementary weft yarns into the warp.
The yarns for the motifs are wound around copper
needles. It is a slow technique.
Paving a New Path
By integrating two techniques of weaving with
muslin yarns following the jamdani technique my
father and I have created fine Muslin Jamdani
fabrics. However this required modification of
the loom. We researched the looms for weaving
muslins and jamdanis, successfully designed a
loom which weaves Muslin Jamdani, which is not
available with others. For weaving Muslin Jamdanis
the loom had to undergo a change as the muslin
yarn is very fine and sensitive. By integrating
features of the loom used for weaving muslins and
the loom used for weaving jamdanis we created
