What Is Ikat? Pochampally, Odisha Bandha and How to Wear an Ikat Dress

Part of the AnaiYah Textile Atlas, our plain-English guides to the fabrics we work with. Last reviewed 2 October 2026.

Hold an ikat motif up close and the edges are soft, as though the pattern had been breathed onto the cloth rather than stamped on it. That blur is the signature of the technique, and it is the one thing a print cannot fake: in ikat the colour goes into the yarn before the yarn reaches the loom, so the pattern has to be assembled thread by thread as the fabric is woven.

Quick answers

  • What is ikat? A resist-dyeing technique. Bundles of yarn are tightly bound where the weaver wants the colour kept out, then dyed. Untied and woven, the bound sections form the pattern.
  • Is ikat printed? No. A print sits on the surface of finished cloth. Ikat is dyed into the threads, so the pattern runs right through the fabric and shows on both faces.
  • Why are the edges blurred? Because dyed yarn shifts slightly as it is woven into place. Weavers aim to keep the shift small; the feathering that remains is how you recognise ikat.
  • Which Indian ikats should I know? Pochampally from Telangana, Bandha from Odisha, and the double-ikat Patola silks of Patan in Gujarat.

How ikat is made

Encyclopaedia Britannica describes the method plainly: the thread is dyed selectively before weaving, by binding fibres around groups of threads so they will not take up colour when the thread is dipped in the dyebath. Britannica traces the technique to Indonesia, where it is called ikat — the Malay and Indonesian word for tying or binding.

In practice the weaver works backwards from the finished design. The yarn is stretched and measured, the pattern is marked across the bundle, and each section that must stay undyed is wrapped tightly so the dye cannot reach it. The bundle goes into the dyebath, is dried, and the wrapping is moved for the next colour. A design with several colours means several rounds of tying, dyeing and drying before a single thread is wound onto the loom.

Then comes the part that makes ikat slow: the dyed threads have to be lined up on the loom so that the pattern reassembles itself as the cloth grows. A motif that drifts out of register cannot be nudged back afterwards.

Single and double ikat

If only the lengthwise threads are resist-dyed, it is warp ikat. If only the crosswise threads are, it is weft ikat. When both are dyed and then matched up on the loom so that the two patterns meet, it is double ikat — the most demanding version of the craft. The Patola silks of Patan in Gujarat are India's best-known double ikat.

Pochampally ikat, Telangana

Pochampally, in the Nalgonda district of Telangana, is the ikat most Indians picture first: geometric motifs, strong diagonals, and a chowka or diamond repeat, woven in cotton and in silk.

It is also one of the first Geographical Indications registered anywhere in India. The GI registry records "Pochampally Ikat" as application number 4, filed on 15 December 2003 by the Pochampally Handloom Weavers Co-op Society, with certificate number 3 issued on 31 December 2004 and registration valid to 14 December 2033. The protected area is Telangana.

A GI is not a quality mark so much as a place mark: it means cloth sold as Pochampally Ikat has to come from the registered area and be made the registered way. If you are buying ikat and the seller cannot tell you where it was woven, that is worth noticing.

Odisha ikat, or Bandha

In Odisha the technique has its own name: Bandha, from the word for tying. Both warp and weft threads are tie-dyed before weaving, so the design surfaces on both sides of the cloth at once, and the work moves through a sequence of tying and dyeing stages before the loom is dressed.

It is woven in western Odisha around Bargarh and Subarnapur — Barpali and Remunda among the weaving villages — and in the Cuttack district at Nuapatna, Badamba and Tigiria. "Odisha Ikat" was registered as a Geographical Indication in 2007.

Odisha motifs lean more figurative than Pochampally's: conch shells, fish, lotus, elephants, temple shapes, and bands of script or verse along a border.

How to tell handwoven ikat from a printed copy

Printed "ikat-look" fabric is everywhere, and it is cheap for a reason. Four things to check:

  • Turn it over. In woven ikat the pattern is in the threads, so the reverse looks much like the face. A print is markedly paler or plain on the back.
  • Look at the edges of the motif. Woven ikat feathers softly. A print has a crisp, mechanical edge — and sometimes a faint dot pattern if you look very closely.
  • Follow one motif across the cloth. Handwoven repeats vary a little; printed repeats are identical every time.
  • Ask where it was woven. A seller who can name the cluster, and point to a GI or the Handloom Mark, is usually selling the real thing. Our guide to handloom vs powerloom covers those labels.

How to wear a ready-to-wear ikat dress

Ikat has mostly reached Indian wardrobes as a sari or a dupatta. It works just as well cut into a dress, and arguably better for a working week — one garment, no draping, and a pattern that reads as considered rather than loud.

See the current pieces in our ikat collection. Each one is made to order in our Bengaluru studio, in XS–XXL or to your own measurements at no extra cost, dispatched within 7 working days.

Caring for ikat

Ikat is dyed yarn, and naturally dyed yarn in particular can release a little surface colour at first. A dry clean before the first wear takes most of it off. After that, hand wash in cold water with a mild detergent, wash it separately, do not scrub, and line dry in the shade, inside out. Iron on the reverse.

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Sources

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