In the quaint little village of Balipur, Utta Pradesh India, nestled amidst lush paddy fields, lives 56 year old weaver, Sudev. He has been weaving traditional Dhonekali saree fabrics and plain fabrics for most of his life. He started weaving for us in 2022 and insisted on taking plain fabrics to weave. This was his speciality.  For a year he was weaving single colour fabrics, like our charcoal fabric for the Rise collection and produced excelent results. 

In 2023 he suffered a cardiac arrest and was hospitalised and unable to work and was advised to take a break from his craft, which he found to be very difficult and it affected him mentally and financially. He slowly resumed work after several months of rest. 

What was astonishing about his return was his spirit and his ability to take on new challenges. For the first time in his career, he came back and asked if he could move into weaving more complex check designs. This was for two reasons. One was to earn more and the other to expand his skill set, experiment and learn and create something new. He trasformed and thrived in his new space. He now weaves multi color checks with jamdani (a traditional weaving technique) on both fine and coarse count yarns making him one of our finest weavers.

A few weeks back he wrote to Fatima, our textile designer and owner of Glocal Weavers in a letter saying,"this year has been one of my best. I have never earned so much and I enjoy this new style of work and my children are very happy to see me like this.” These kinds of stories are heartwarming, ones that truly reflect on our purpose of a fair and better world for all. 

If you own a piece of our charcoal or check fabrics from the past two collections, Sudev was one of the weavers who contributed to weaving those fabrics for you. In this sustainable ecosystem, we all help each other and make a difference along the way.

We design and create our entire collections of fabrics with Glocal Weavers and we hope to share many more stories in the future.