Handloom

Nepal's weaving traditions,
organised and elevated.

HFMN supports Nepal's handloom weavers, producer groups and traditional textile hubs — connecting looms with silk, wool and natural fibers, and elevating quality, design and market reach.

Read the Stroy See Product Catalogue

Weavers organised 4200

Handloom clusters 27

Product lines 11

The Story

The loom is Nepal's oldest factory.

Long before industrial mills, the loom in the courtyard was Nepal's factory floor — a household economy that turned mountain wool, silk and plant fibre into cloth for a whole valley.

HFMN's handloom programme protects that lineage while giving it the modern spine it needs: shared quality standards, traceable raw material, and a national market channel that pays weavers a fair rate for a fair count.

At the loom

Every warp thread carries a household.

“A single Nepali handloom sustains not just a weaver, but the dyer, the spinner, the mulberry farmer and the cooperative that binds them.”

Our Approach

Four steps, one framework.

HFMN organises weavers into cooperatives, trains new artisans, documents traditional techniques and connects producers with designers, buyers and export platforms — all under one national quality framework.

Organise

Form cooperatives

We help scattered weavers register as producer cooperatives with legal recognition, shared governance and a single point of accountability.

Train

Skill the next generation

Master-apprentice residencies, count testing and finishing workshops keep traditional techniques alive and lift quality to export grade.

Document

Archive the craft

Pattern drafts, motifs and process notes are catalogued in a public design library so no technique is lost to a single retirement.

Connect

Open the market

Producers are matched with designers, domestic retail and international buyers under one national quality framework and fair-rate ledger.

Weaver Support

Each thread below is a working line of HFMN's handloom programme — a rate, a commitment, or a number we're accountable for.

01 Organise weavers and producer cooperatives Cooperative formation · legal · governance
02 Support traditional textile skills Master-apprentice residencies · pattern archives
03 Connect handloom with silk, wool and natural fibers Cross-programme material routing
04 Promote design improvement Design studios · designer-weaver residencies
05 Support quality standards Count testing · colourfastness · loom audits
06 Link producers with market platforms Domestic retail · export gateways · e-catalogue

Product Categories

The catalogue wall.

Eleven handloom product lines — hover a tile to reveal its market tag.

Everyday Scarves

Formal Shawls

Everyday Stoles

Ceremonial Sarees

Trade Fabric rolls

Home Home textiles

Institutional Institutional fabrics

Heritage Traditional textiles

Luxury Luxury handloom

Blended Natural fiber blends

Blended Silk-wool blends

The Weaver's Ledger

The loom, part by part.

Five points where HFMN's programme meets the loom itself — from the warp beam to the finished selvedge.

1 2 3 4 5

Part 01

Warp beam

Loom repair grants, count-testing kits and design libraries reach registered weavers each season — the invisible infrastructure of a working handloom.

Part 02

Heddles

We commission master weavers to document dying motifs and teach them back to the next generation through paid apprenticeships.

Part 03

Reed

HFMN publishes reference piece rates by count and pattern, so no cooperative undercuts another and no weaver undersells their hours.

Part 04

Shuttle

A registered shuttle mark travels with each finished bolt — a chain-of-custody stamp from loom to buyer.

Part 05

Cloth beam

Finished cloth is measured, graded and logged in the cluster ledger before it leaves the workshop floor.

Reference Piece Rates

The ledger, published.

A shared floor rate by yarn count keeps clusters from undercutting each other. Weights below are indexed to the 40s cotton baseline (=100), reflecting finer counts, slower loom time and higher skill. Illustrative only — the seasonal cash figures are published quarterly to registered cooperatives.

Count Yarn Product line Loom time Rate index (40s = 100)

40s

Yarn
Cotton

Product line
Everyday scarves, stoles, home textiles

Loom time
1.5–2 days / metre

100
60s

Yarn
Fine cotton / cotton-silk

Product line
Formal stoles, shirting, light shawls

Loom time
2–3 days / metre

145
80s

Yarn
Silk-wool blend

Product line
Winter shawls, jacket fabric

Loom time
3–4 days / metre

190
100s

Yarn
Mulberry silk

Product line
Bridal sarees, luxury yardage

Loom time
4–6 days / metre

240

Index reflects yarn cost, loom-time and finishing complexity. A weaver working 100s mulberry silk is paid roughly 2.4× the 40s cotton floor for the same metre of cloth.

“For thirty years I wove for whoever came. Now I weave for a mark that carries my name off the mountain.”

— Master weaver, Palpa handloom cluster

Nepal's weaving traditions, organised and elevated.