Our Story
SS Handlooms is named after our father, Seetha Srisailam. Our family has woven in Pochampally for many generations. Our father learned the craft at home from his parents, Seetha Muthyalu and Seetha Laxminarsamma, and the family loom has kept working ever since.
Our home is in Pochampally, a short walk from the Pochampally Handloom Park. The only things we buy are the silk yarn and the dyes. Everything else happens in our home: tying the yarn, dyeing it, setting up the loom, and weaving. Every saree carries the work of our whole family.
We weave ikat silk and ikat cotton sarees, including Telia Rumal, the most intricate of Pochampally's designs.
How an ikat saree is made
Ikat is a resist-dyeing technique. Before anything is woven, the threads are gathered into bundles, tightly tied in sections, and dyed. The tied parts resist the colour, so the pattern exists on the yarn before it ever reaches the loom. In Pochampally, both the warp (the lengthwise threads) and the weft (the crosswise threads) can be dyed this way, and the weaver aligns them by hand as the cloth grows.
One warp that we prepare is enough to weave seven sarees.
How to recognise real Pochampally ikat
Look closely at the edge of a motif. In handwoven ikat, the edges are soft and slightly feathered where the dyed threads meet. That small imperfection is the sign of hand dyeing and hand weaving. Printed and machine-made copies have edges that are too sharp.
A craft with a long history
Ikat travelled along ancient trade routes across Asia, and Telangana has woven it for generations. Pochampally's style is its own: bold geometric motifs, some inspired by birds and trees, woven in cotton, silk, and a silk-cotton blend known locally as sico. Traditional pieces were red and white; today the colours are endless. The most intricate design, Telia Rumal, is a double ikat woven with oil-treated yarn, which gives it its name.
Pochampally Ikat holds a Geographical Indication (GI) tag from the Government of India, and in 2021 Bhoodan Pochampally was named one of the Best Tourism Villages by the UN World Tourism Organization.
Why our prices differ
Each saree is priced by its design. A simple pattern can be tied and woven fairly quickly; an intricate one takes many more hours of tying, dyeing, and weaving. A higher price pays for that time.