Every Shivalaya piece passes through the same Jaipur workshop, where 25+ artisans carve, print, cut and sew under one roof. Here is roughly what that looks like.
Carving and mixing
A pattern starts as a hand-carved wooden block, and a design needs one block per colour — a three-colour floral is three separate blocks, each carved to register against the others. That is why adding a colour to a custom design costs more than changing one: it is another piece of carved teak, not a setting on a machine.
Colour is mixed in-house to match each order rather than bought pre-mixed. Mixing to a reference is a skill in itself; it is also what makes a custom colourway possible at all.
Printing, one impression at a time
Cloth is laid flat and pinned along a long table. A printer dips the block into the colour tray, aligns it against the last impression by eye, and presses it down with the heel of the hand — repeat after repeat, across the full length of the fabric.
A printer working a full length is making a few hundred of these judgements in a row. Because a person places every stamp, no two lengths come out quite identical, and the small variations in density and registration are the evidence that nobody used a roller.
Drying and washing
Printed cloth is dried before it goes anywhere near a needle. Skipping or rushing this is how colour ends up transferring in a finished garment, which is the single most common complaint about cheap block print — and the reason our own advice is always to wash a new piece cold and separately the first time.
Cutting and sewing
Once printed and dried, fabric moves to cutting and stitching in the same unit — into fabric by the length, or into finished pieces like kaftans, kids wear and kantha quilts.
Cutting a printed cloth is not the same as cutting a plain one. Pattern pieces have to be placed with the motif in mind, so a large repeat does not land badly across a bodice or fall off the edge of a sleeve. That placement decision is made by a person at the table.
Made to order, not stocked in bulk
We don't mass-produce ahead of demand. Each order is made after it is placed, which is why production takes roughly 7–10 working days before it ships worldwide by DHL Express. Larger quantities take longer — a fact worth building into any launch date rather than discovering late.
The background to all of it is in our story since 1991.