It is a derivation of the Malay word "Mengikat" means 'to tie' or 'to bind'. This technique entails tying and dyeing the warp and weft before weaving. Bundles of threads are meticulously arranged to a prepared design and bound with impermeable yarn or rubber band so that as the yarn is dyed with a range of color, the areas protected from each dye are resisted. Within the subcontinent the clothes produced by this yarn resist work are called tie-and-dye, bandha, patola, chitka and telia rumal.
Fibres Used: Cotton and Silk
Motifs used: The motif used in any traditional Ikat designs may include lotus flowers, creeping vine (lata, geese, deer, elephant), conch shell or fish. In traditional Orissan style, the end piece may contain, in dozens of Ikat patterned bands of different sizes with various levels of patterning complexities ranging from elephants and lions standing by trees to simple triables and dashes. Motifs of Andhrapradesh Ikat sarees are modern, abstrat, modernist and geometric.
Technique: IN orissa very thin yarn is used, which helps in achieveing fine, detailed and curvilinear patterns. Orissan Ikats are woven on counterbalance flyshuttles treadle looms, the structure resting on the ground over the edge of the weavers' pit. The shedding mechanism hangs from the ceiling and the warps to be wound on to a cloth beam or run over a beam and tied in the roof space out of the way. In AP the warps are tied ready, for dyeing at their full length whereas the weft are tied in groups on a frame fanning out to from the segment of a circle from a central peg. Only two or three threads are used from a cluster on a rectangle.
Places: Orissa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh.
