Loom Vastra — Handloom weaving and handwoven cloth | loomvastra.com
The two loom types differ on four measurable axes — picks per minute, working width, yarn count and fabric weight — and each axis leaves a mark in the finished cloth.
Start with speed. A handloom depends on the weaver's arm: the shuttle is thrown and the pick beaten in by hand, which caps insertion at 10-20 picks per minute. A powerloom motorises the same action and runs at 300-1,000 picks per minute, with air-jet machines at the top of that range — a gap of 15 to 100 times.
Speed decides output. Working a 6-8 hour day, a handloom weaver finishes about 2-5 m of cotton cloth. Any supply of 'handloom' fabric in unlimited metreage conflicts with that arithmetic, because the only way to weave faster is to stop being a handloom.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Width is the second axis. A saree loom is built 115-125 cm wide because the cloth must finish at 1.15-1.25 m; an ordinary pit loom weaves 60-100 cm at a time. Behind that width sits a counted warp: a 45-inch saree at 80 ends per inch holds about 3,600 threads, drawn through the heddles over 4-8 hours.
The third and fourth axes are yarn and weight. Handloom cotton runs 40s-80s counts — only historical Dhakai muslin reached 200-300s — and the finished cloth weighs 120-180 g/m² for shirting and 60-100 g/m² for sheer muslin.
None of these figures requires a laboratory. The companion page How to Identify Handloom Fabric turns them into six checks you can run in a shop, and Handloom Fabric Types maps the same ranges onto cotton, muslin, ikat and silk.
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