Wine, Blue & Yellow Silk Ikat Fabric – Waves

The Waves cloth is banded rather than patterned: wide stripes of wine red, dusty pink, slate blue, olive and mustard yellow cross the width, each one dissolving into the next through a white feathered edge — the ‘wave’ of the name. Turned on its side the bands run down a garment as vertical colour blocks; used across, they make a bold stripe for a table or a bed. Sixty per cent silk, forty cotton, with the glow that proportion gives.

Product details

• Product type: handwoven ikat fabric, sold by the metre
• Origin: Margilan, Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan
• Weaving technique: warp ikat — the threads are tie-dyed before weaving; handloom, no power looms
• Composition: 60% silk, 40% cotton
• Width: 42 cm (17 in)
• Pattern repeat: about 225 cm
• Main colours: wine red; dusty pink; slate blue; olive; yellow; white
• Design / motif: broad horizontal bands with feathered (wave) edges
• Sold by: the metre — one unit is 1 m (1.09 yd), cut in one continuous length from 1 m up
• Condition: new, uncut from the bolt
• Care: dry-clean recommended; if washing, by hand at 30 °C with a mild detergent, dry in the shade, iron on the reverse

Suitable uses

Colour-blocked dresses and skirts, a striped kaftan, curtain panels seamed at the repeat, cushion fronts cut across the stripe. More cloths of this kind are under Silk Ikats.

Handmade note

Handwoven on a wooden loom, so expect what the loom leaves: motif edges that feather where the warp shifted, a hairline of colour variation along the length, and a selvedge that is not perfectly straight. The pattern is dyed into the thread, not printed on it, and shows on both faces — the test described in our handwoven versus printed ikat guide. Colours differ slightly between dyelots, so order the full length you need at once.

Cut to order and dispatched from Bukhara within 24 hours by Uzbekiston Pochtasi tracked airmail: USA 9–18 working days, Europe and the UK 8–16, elsewhere 10–20.