About Uppada
Uppada is a beach town located in East Godavari district in the state of Andhra Pradesh and is famous for beautifully designed silk sarees. Uppada is well known for its traditional Jamdani / Uppada Handlooms. Uppada handlooms are well known for its unique designs. Usually Uppada handlooms are made in cotton/silk warp and wept.
The count used in weaving gives the softness and hardness of the fabric. The count in a handloom fabric means the number of threads woven length wise and breadth wise known as warp and wept respectively in a square inch. In Uppada the count used is 100 (length) – 120 (breadth). The count makes the quality of the fabric. The weavers in Uppada uses a technique without any mechanical aids to weave the traditional Jamdani weaving to create rich patterns using gold and silver zari for which Uppada saree weavers have received Geographical Indication (GI) registration in the year 2009. Jamdani is a hand loom woven fabric made of cotton, which historically was referred to as muslin. The Jamdani weaving tradition is of Bengali origin.
Dyeing: - First the yarn is washed and then dipped in the required colour which is in a boiler and the worker goes on turning the yarn so that the colour is evenly mixed in the yarn. The most important aspect in this process is the mixing of colours which will give unique and durable colour to the fabric. Then it is again washed and dried. These yarns are then starched. Starching of the yarn is where the colour in the yarn will get more permanent nature and gives the yarn a polished look. The starched yarn is brought from the merchants by master weavers and is distributed to weavers. Then it is turned in a charka. The turning in charka is where the yarn will become thread, which is used for wept.
The loading of yarn in warp is the next process. Then yarn is loaded into the looms. The length of yarn which is loaded as warp is
known as Pacham. A weaver can make four sarees from one pacham. It will take a week to weave one Pacham of four sarees. The cost of Uppada saree varies from `5,000 to `80,000 and goes upto over `3 Lakh in case of specially ordered wedding sarees.