Why Our Custom Hand Woven Baby Wraps and Clothing Feels So Darn Luxurious
I hear from my customers all of the time that they didn’t expect their clothing and baby wraps to feel so soft and luxurious. They tell me that they’re delighted and pleasantly surprised by the texture and feel of the fabric and that they had bought custom clothing or baby wraps from us because of the vibrant colours and individualized designs. Which got me wondering, why could this be? Now, I think I’ve got the answer.
We live in the era of online shopping. Who doesn’t buy things online anymore? Groceries: check! Gifts: check! Clothing: double check! As a busy parent, I myself love the convenience of buying online. I’ve been shopping online for years and have had really positive experiences. But, I like to do my homework and it’s important to me to feel confident that what I buy will be what I get. When we came up with the concept for our business, I knew that I wanted it to be as accessible and easy for parents like me as possible. So, selling our hand woven textiles online was an easy choice.
But, what does this have to do with the feel of our fabric? Well, it’s simple. Because the majority of our customers buy online, they don’t get the experience of wearing and touching the fabric before purchasing. So, this blog is for those of us who need a little bit more information to feel comfortable about investing in a custom, handmade baby wrap, poncho, scarf or vest.
The buttery feeling of our fabric starts with the materials. We use a combination of two high-quality, natural fibre threads, specifically bamboo and cotton from a company in Quebec. Bamboo and cotton are the yin and yang that give our fabric its special quality. Cotton provides a wonderful, durable base and we chose it for its breathability and the fact that it’s hypoallergenic. It’s easy to care for just throw in the washer and dryer like a towel. Even when baby has spit up on you and the wrap for the one-millionth time it will still wear and look great! While we love cotton, bamboo is really the superstar! We often weave our garments with a bamboo weft and a cotton warp because it is luxuriously soft. In addition to making our fabric look and feel amazing, bamboo has other great properties that we love; it’s shimmer and drape, and the fact that it is one of the most sustainable and eco-friendly fibres in the world. This is important to us because each time we weave a custom baby wrap or garment, the warp has 702 threads! That’s a lot of thread! And each thread is individually handled three times with care by our skilled staff who are paid a living wage to set up, dress the loom and weave.
All throughout our weaving process, we’re thinking about the quality of the fabric and how it will look and feel against the skin; wrapped around our babies or hugging and enveloping us as clothing throughout our day. We know that everyone has different preferences for texture and feel. That’s why we give our customers the option to choose either a plain weave, which is a balanced weave between weft and warp or a pebble weave which is slightly more weft dominant making it a bit thicker. Pebble weave also has a beautiful texture that adds to its complexity. Once the weaving is complete we go back and repair any knots in the threads and the little imperfections that are a natural result of working with a handloom. By the time our hand woven fabric is finished it’s a smooth, creamy, colourful, and unique work of textile art.
