This process is the most tedious and difficult, making double ikats the most expensive and revered. Some patterns reflected the spiritual practices of the people who created them, others were influenced by the natural world around them, and many were simply artistic endeavours.
Each motif may have been used to either appease or protect individuals against spirits , though there is very little information about which patterns signify what. What we do know is that vegetation, triangular designs, and colour have played key roles in traditional ikat. Each one pleasant, protective, and powerful in their own way. Not unlike many ancient and current cultures, flowers and vegetation are used as symbols of fertility.
The bud and the leaf are the quintessential imagery of fertility. The more colours woven into the handmade fabric, the more intensive the process, and therefore the more expensive the ikat pieces became. Vibrant colours were often worn by men to assert power and wealth within ancient communities.
Traditional ikat colours included those dyed from plants, flowers, and tree bark , infusing even more meaning from nature into each textile created. We may not ever know all of the stories of ikat fabric motifs, colours, and processes, though the enduring tradition gives us all an opportunity to find meaning in our clothing. The University of Nebraska put it perfectly in an explanation of ikat is the technique of resistance dyeing which creates beautiful, one-of-a-kind handmade textiles.
She works as a freelance content creator and manager. Traditionally, ikat was frequently used in wall hangings, and ikat patterns are still commonplace on walls around the world. Australia and New Zealand combined are home to hundreds of millions of sheep. China, the United States, and India all produce large amounts of cotton.
China remains the world leader in artificial textile production. Silk and wool are in the higher range of fabric costs with cotton in the mid-range. Artificial fibers are, by far, the least expensive options, which has led to their widespread popularity. Some types of ikat are more intricate and beautiful than others. There are dozens of ways to weave and dye ikat. Some of these techniques follow ancestral guidelines that are still practiced today, and others involve heavy factory machinery with no inherent personality or culture whatsoever.
Mass-produced ikat is usually the cheapest with handmade fabric fetching a pretty penny. In warp ikat, the warp threads are dyed in ikat patterns, and the weft threads are dyed in a solid color.
Weft ikat is the opposite of warp ikat—the patterned portion is the weft thread, and the warp thread is a single color. As the most complicated form of ikat, double ikat features both warp and weft threads that are ikat-dyed. It is very tricky to make these two patterns overlap perfectly, so double ikat is more prized than other varieties. In one form or another, ikat has been made by practically every culture in the world. One of the main reasons for this difference is biodegradability; every natural fiber on the face of the Earth biodegrades and returns to the biosphere within years or less, but according to the best estimates available, it may take tens of thousands of years for petrochemical-based plastics to completely disappear from the environment.
Among the natural fibers, cotton is the most polluting. In addition to introducing genotoxins, xenoestrogens, and other harmful compounds into the surrounding environment, unsustainable farming practices also seed the soil with toxic heavy metals that will cause neurodegenerative disease for generations to come. Wool and silk, on the other hand, are almost impossible to mess up. There are many types of wool, and some form taken from rare goats and rabbits, for instance, may never be truly sustainable.
Run-of-the-mill merino wool, however, is easy to harvest organically, and sustainable practices help sheep and humans cooperate for the greater good better than ever before. Perhaps because they were created in defiance of natural law, artificial fibers and the natural environment have never mixed well. For millennia, ikat has been made with safe, natural dyes that biodegrade easily without leaving any toxins behind. This woman is spinning thread. Text Box Threads tied according to specific design, Iban Pua.
Ikats from east Sumba shown at left are characterized by bigger spirit or animal or human figures. Skull trees harking back to an earlier era when head taking was part of inter-village warfare are also found on ikats there.
Lizards and sometimes crocodiles are present in the design on Timor ikats. These animal motifs relate to myths. Ikats of this sort can be used as mnemonic devices that storytellers use to relate old myths to village audiences. Ikats from West Timor and Timor Leste are also used as status markers for high nobles and as exchange goods in marriages between families.
Flores textiles are known for their warm browns and reds. The ikats made by Lio weavers often mimic the overall field design of old patola trade cloths. Tying the threads dictates the majority of design on an ikat. However, there are a few other aspects of ikat production which contribute to design. The selvedge bands are the bands which surround the textiles and act as a border to the interior field. Selvedges often indicate the quality of the textile by how tightly they are woven. These bands are an element of design added onto the main field of the textile and they can be patterned or plain and simple.
In addition to the selvedge bands, beadwork may be added on to an ikat to finalize design. Beads may be added to the fringe of the textile, or woven into the main field of the piece. Double ikats—in which both the warp and weft yarns are tied and dyed before being woven into a single textile—are relatively rare because of the intensive skilled labour required to produce them.
In fact, many other parts of India have their indigenous Ikat weaving techniques. The latter, known as Patan Patola, is one of the rarest forms of double Ikat, which takes a lot of time and effort in dyeing and weaving.
A different form of Patola ikat is made in Rajkot, Gujarat. In weft ikat it is the weaving or weft yarn that carries the dyed patterns. Therefore, the pattern only appears as the weaving proceeds. Weft ikats are much slower to weave than warp ikat because the weft yarns must be carefully adjusted after each passing of the shuttle to maintain the clarity of the design.
In warp ikat it is only the warp yarns that are dyed using the ikat technique. The weft yarns are dyed a solid colour. The ikat pattern is clearly visible in the warp yarns wound onto the loom even before the weft is woven in. Warp ikat is, amongst others, produced in Indonesia; more specifically in Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Sumatra by respectively the Dayaks, Torajans and Bataks.
Double Ikat is a technique in which both warp and the weft are resist-dyed prior to weaving. Obviously it is the most difficult to make and the most expensive. Double ikat is only produced in three countries: India, Japan and Indonesia. The double ikat made in Patan, Gujarat in India is the most complicated. Called "patola," it is made using fine silk yarns and many colours. It may be patterned with a small motif that is repeated many times across the length of a six-meter sari.
Sometimes the Patan double ikat is pictorial with no repeats across its length. That is, each small design element in each colour was individually tied in the warp and weft yarns. It's an extraordinary achievement in the textile arts.
These much sought after textiles were traded by the Dutch East Indies company for exclusive spice trading rights with the sultanates of Indonesia.
The double ikat woven in the small Bali Aga village, Tenganan in east Bali in Indonesia reflects the influence of these prized textiles. Some of the Tenganan double ikat motifs are taken directly from the patola tradition. Pasapalli Ikat is a one of the gorgeous Ikkat saree and Pasapalli ikat saree made in Odisha. The word Pasapalli comes from 'Pasa' which means a board game with four clear parts much like Ludo.
Each pasapalli ikat saree or material - which is actually made with the same technique as the famed Sambalpuri Ikat - has some or the other form of this chequered design.
Ikat created by dyeing the warp are simpler to make than either weft ikat or double ikat. First the yarns--cotton, silk, wool or other fibres—are wound onto a frame. Then they are tied into bundles. The bundles may be covered with wax, as in batik.
However, in making batik, the craftsperson applies the resist to the finished cloth rather than to the yarns to be woven. The warp yarns are then wrapped tightly with thread or some other dye-resistant material to prevent unwanted dye permeation.
The procedure is repeated, depending on the number of colours required to complete the design. Multiple coloration is common, requiring multiple rounds of tying and dyeing. The newly dyed and thoroughly washed bundles are wound onto the loom to produce the warp longitudinal yarns. Warp threads are adjusted for the desired alignment for precise motifs. Some ikat traditions, such as Central Asia's, embrace a blurred aesthetic in the design. Other traditions favour a more precise and more difficult to achieve refinement in the placement of the ikat yarns.
South American and Indonesian ikat are known for a high degree of warp alignment. Weavers must adjust the warp repeatedly to maintain pattern alignment. Patterns result from a combination of the warp dye and the weft thread colour. Some warp ikat traditions are designed with vertical-axis symmetry or have a "mirror-image" running along their long centre line.
That is, whatever pattern or design is woven on the right is duplicated on the left in reverse order about a central warp thread group. Patterns can be created in the vertical, horizontal or diagonal.
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