Hands On

Company Profile

Few profiles in this group cover as many distinct craft techniques. Ikat voiles come plain and with jacquard designs, buta motifs and borders; kalamkari is offered as block-printed fabric and made-ups; the Warangal durries are cotton-cotton and cotton-jute, plain, interlocked or kalamkari-printed; and the made-up side runs to bedsheets, table covers, place mats and cushion covers. Embossed wax printing and crochet lace garments widen the offer further. Because the dyes include vegetable options alongside chemical dyes, colour expectations — the softer, variable shades natural dyeing gives — should be agreed at sampling, not assumed.

Woven fabrics — the family Hands On works in — are made by interlacing warp and weft, and their character comes from the weave, the yarn and the finish in that order. Buyers comparing woven mills should ask for the full construction (yarn counts, threads per inch, finished weight) rather than accepting a fabric name alone, because names like poplin, twill or canvas cover several grades. The other discipline in this trade is lot consistency: dyeing and finishing are batch processes, so agreeing shade bands, shrinkage limits and inspection standards before bulk is woven is what separates a smooth program from an expensive argument.

Sourcing and Working With Hands On

Craft production is sampled differently from mill production: with ikat, kalamkari and handloom cloth, agree a physical standard sample and a tolerance for the hand-made variation that is part of the product's character. Confirm which items are handloom and which powerloom, the dye type per design, and the width per article, since the stated range runs from 44 to 110 inches across the list. Made-ups need finished sizes and stitching standards agreed in the same conversation as the fabric itself.

Quality in textiles is a chain, and Hands On controls only its links in it. Map the chain for your product — fibre or yarn supply, fabric production, dyeing and finishing, conversion — and note which links sit outside the mill, because those are where your own checking matters most. A pre-shipment sample from the actual bulk, tested against the approved standard, costs little and settles most questions while the goods are still at the mill. Keep the retained bulk sample until the fabric is converted; it is the reference if anything is disputed later.

Understanding the Range

Woven cloth rewards buyers who read constructions rather than names. The same weave name can be produced at several thread counts and weights, and the difference shows up in opacity, crease behaviour and how the cloth sews. A mill like Hands On will quote against a construction — yarn count, threads per inch, finished weight and width — and that written construction, kept with the approved sample, is what makes a repeat order come back the same as the first. Printed, dyed and grey versions of one construction are effectively three products, and should be sampled and approved as three.

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