Afghan Ikat Textile
TCC-6202
3.6 Feet X 3.7 Feet

This beautiful Ikat/Ikkat textile is hand-woven on a hand-loom.It is a dyeing technique used to create designs on fabric that employees a resist dyeing technique on the yarn before dyeing and weaving the fabric. In an Ikat the resist dyeing is created by tying various yarns or groups of yarns with a tight wrap which is applied in the desired design. The most usual way is to use wax or some type of paste made out of mud or starch so that the dye does not get on to parts of the fabric creating a pattern.The yarns are then dyed, the bindings can then be changed to create a new design and the yarns are dyed again in another dye. This process is repeated many times to create multicolored patterns. When the dyeing is complete, all these bindings are removed and the yarns are woven into a cloth which can be sometime blurry. Ikats with little blurriness and more elaborate designs and colors are more difficult to make and hence expensive. However this blurriness is priced by textile collectors as it is a characteristic of ikats. These were generally made using dyes extracted out of plants, minerals, rocks, stones etc.