Ivy Style blog chats with Cape Madras co-founder Brian Sisselman who talks about the Madras fabric, its history and how it is made.

To weave the highest-quality madras, we went to a small village in Tamil Nadu in Southeast India, the birthplace of madras, that’s been producing the fabric for over 100 years. Not the easiest route, but the one that would make our madras fabric stand out. We found out that the best madras comes from drying the yarns in fields with temperatures over 110 degrees at midday.

We make our madras using superior 100% combed cotton, 40/40s yarn, and increasing reeds and picks in the weaving process. We create all our yarns and dry them in the hottest time of the year. The weaving is done on power looms dating back 60 years.

Before we pick complementing colors in all our patchwork fabrics, we create hundreds of sample swatches on bit looms. With these 10-inch squares we build the color patterns for the patch fabrics we ultimately make into garments.

Some stunning photos below the fold.