The Story Behind Our Handwoven Cotton Fabrics from India

If you sew, there is a high likelihood that you know how much time, labor, and material goes into making a garment. But we don’t always think about the time, labor, and material that goes into the fabric we sew with. At Core Fabrics, we want highlight and humanize the entire life cycle our fabrics take, including the significant labor involved before we even set eyes on our future sewing projects.

One of the collections we're especially proud to carry is our Handwoven Cotton from India. Woven by artisans in eastern India, these fabrics represent generations of textile knowledge while helping support craftspeople who are able to continue their work within their own communities.

The journey from cotton fibre to finished fabric is remarkably transparent, making this collection a wonderful example of the kind of supply chain we strive to support.

What Is an Artisan Cooperative?

Our handwoven cottons come through an artisan cooperative, a network of more than 300 independent weavers and craftspeople working across eastern India.

Rather than bringing everyone into a single factory, the cooperative allows artisans to continue weaving from workshops in their homes and villages. Many families work together, passing skills from one generation to the next.

By organizing collectively, artisans can reach customers around the world while maintaining independence over their craft and remaining rooted in their communities.

How Does the Cooperative Work?

The cooperative begins by supplying yarn to the artisans. For our Khadi cottons, this yarn is hand-spun before weaving begins.

Before accepting a project, artisans discuss pricing with the cooperative based on the complexity of the design and the amount of labour required. Instead of receiving a fixed hourly wage, they are paid for each piece they produce according to an agreed-upon price.

Once the yarn is prepared, it is carefully dressed onto handlooms before weaving begins. Every metre is woven by hand, a slower process than industrial weaving, but one that creates beautiful character and subtle variations impossible to reproduce by machine.

After weaving, the finished fabrics are collected by the cooperative, quality checked, and shipped to our Montreal warehouse, where they're cut individually for every order.
 

A Living Textile Tradition

Hand weaving has existed in India for thousands of years, but it took on renewed importance during India's independence movement.

In the early 20th century, Mahatma Gandhi encouraged Indians to spin and weave their own cloth as a symbol of economic independence from British colonial rule. At the time, cotton grown in India was exported to Britain, manufactured into textiles, and sold back to Indian consumers—a system that displaced local textile production.

Hand-spun and handwoven khadi became a powerful symbol of self-reliance and local craftsmanship.

Today, while industrial textile production dominates much of the global market, hand weaving continues to provide income for many rural communities and helps preserve textile traditions that have been passed down for generations.

 Curious to learn more? Check out this post on how ikat prints are woven in India!

A Different Way of Making Fabric

One of the remarkable aspects of these fabrics is how little machinery is involved in their production.

Because the cloth is woven on handlooms, often during daylight hours—the weaving process requires very little electricity. Our supplier also uses azo-free dyes to help reduce the environmental impact of dyeing, and the cotton is sourced within India, keeping much of the production process relatively close together geographically.

No textile is without environmental impact, and we don't believe there's such a thing as a perfect fabric. Every fibre and every manufacturing process involves trade-offs.

What we appreciate is the continual effort to improve. Our supplier is actively exploring natural dye processes while continuing to support slower, lower-impact methods of production.

Why Transparency Matters

At Core Fabrics, we’ve made it our mission to help bridge the gap from maker to maker, which is why we love working with this supplier. One of the many great things about this Artisan Coop is the level of transparency in the supply chain. This is important because it ensures that everyone who has a hand in creating a product is treated with respect and given a fair wage for the role they play.
In a fast-fashion world, it’s easy to forget or overlook how much labor goes into turning raw materials into wearable garments, so transparency is key in reminding us all that the hands that touch our fabric should be treated with as much respect as we treat our own craft once we receive the fabric.

As sewists, we benefit from this slow-fashion approach to textiles and this honouring of traditional craft. As humans, we benefit from a collective understanding that all people in our supply chains should be treated fairly and with respect. What's better than a gorgeous textile you can feel good about wearing?!