Behind the Scenes: How Myyra Artisans Print Your Fabric
Most people who buy hand block printed fabric have never watched it being made.
That is not a criticism. The workshops where it happens are in Jaipur, not in the cities where the finished pieces end up. The process is slow, physical, and impossible to automate. And it leaves marks — on the fabric, and on the people who do it.
This is what it looks like inside our workshop on a working day.
The Block Carver Comes First
Before any printing begins, someone has to make the block.
Block carving is a separate craft from printing. The carvers — mostly men who learned the skill from their fathers, in a tradition that runs back several generations in Jaipur — work with teak and sheesham wood. They use small chisels, awls, and files. The design is transferred to the wood surface by hand, then carved out, recess by recess, over days.
A complex geometric design might take a week to carve. A simple floral might take a day.
The block has to be precise in a specific way: not machine-precise, but consistent enough that when it is pressed onto cloth repeatedly, the pattern registers correctly with itself. A block that is even a few millimetres off in its repeat geometry will produce a print that looks wrong across a length of fabric.
We have blocks in our workshop that are thirty years old and still in use. A well-made teak block, cared for correctly, outlasts the artisan who carved it.
The Fabric Arrives Before the Dye
GOTS-compliant organic cotton arrives at the workshop in large rolls — pre-washed, pre-shrunk, and free of the finishing chemicals that conventional cotton is typically treated with. It has already been through the organic chain of custody from farm to fabric.
The fabric is laid out flat on long printing tables — ours run the length of the workshop floor — on a padded surface that gives just enough give to allow the block to make clean contact. The surface has to be completely even. Any bump or hollow shows up in the print.
The Dye Bath Is Built the Night Before
For natural dyes, preparation happens the evening before printing. Indigo vats are living chemistry — a fermentation process that requires the right temperature, the right alkalinity, and the right balance of reducing agents to keep the dye in the correct oxidation state. An indigo vat that has been neglected for a day prints flat and uneven. One that has been properly maintained prints with that characteristic depth of blue that shifts slightly with each press of the block.
Madder and pomegranate rind are mordanted separately — the cotton is pre-treated with a metallic mordant (usually alum) that fixes the dye permanently into the fibre. Without mordanting, the colour washes out.
For reactive dyes — used in colours where natural dye does not deliver the right result — the paste is prepared fresh each morning. It thickens as it sits, which changes how it transfers from block to cloth. The printers adjust their pressure through the morning as the paste changes consistency.
The Printer’s Body Is the Machine
When people imagine hand block printing, they sometimes picture a slow, meditative process. It is not. It is physically demanding work.
The printer — standing at the table — loads the block by pressing it into a dye-saturated pad, then lifts it, positions it by eye against a pin registration system, and strikes it onto the cloth with the heel of the hand. The strike has to be even across the whole face of the block. Too light and the print is patchy. Too heavy and the dye bleeds under the edges.
Then the block is moved — one repeat width — and the process repeats. Down the length of the table. Then back up for the next colour pass. Multi-colour designs require a separate block and a separate pass for each colour, registered to the first.
An experienced printer moves with a rhythm. The positioning, the load, the strike — it becomes muscle memory. But it never becomes mindless. Every press is a judgment call.
Eight Pairs of Hands
We count eight pairs of hands that typically touch a finished piece between raw fabric and shipped parcel.
The block carver. The dyer. The printer. The washer — who rinses the printed fabric in treated water baths after printing and between colour passes. The finisher — who inspects the cloth, clips threads, and checks print registration. The cutter. The stitcher — who hems edges, attaches labels, adds envelope closures to duvet covers. The packer.
Each of these roles is a skill. The stitcher who finishes a duvet cover has spent years learning how to run a hem so it lies flat on an organic cotton weave. The inspector who checks print registration knows what an acceptable variation looks like and what reads as a defect.
Madhu Chandra — who started this workshop in 1999 — trained many of the women in these roles herself. She went into villages. She sat with women who had never held a printing block and showed them the technique. She did it for free, because she believed the skill was worth spreading.
What the Imperfections Mean
Every piece that leaves this workshop carries evidence of the process.
A slight colour shift at the edge of a print, where the dye load on the block was a fraction less than the centre. A ghost impression at a join where the block was lifted rather than pulled. A repeat that is a hair off-register on a complex multi-colour design.
These are not defects. They are proof.
Proof that no machine touched this fabric. Proof that a person stood at a table, loaded a block, and struck it by hand. A machine-printed imitation is perfect. That is how you know it is a machine.
Our full range of hand block printed home linen is at myyra.in. Browse our hand block printed fabrics, organic cotton bed linen, block printed cushion covers, and table linen.