GROUP SIZE 4
Join us for an immersive 14 day weaving holiday in beautiful north Kerala. Soak up the lush tropical landscapes of palms and banana plants, enjoy delicious homemade Kerala cooking, golden deserted beaches and the heartbeat of waves breaking onto the shore from your beach front accommodation, five minutes from our small renovated weaving studio.
Choose to weave running fabric with the traditional flying shuttle, or choose to weave manually with the flat shuttle, to create art projects combining techniques and diverse materials or to create table mats and runners or a floor mat. No experience required. Our 2026 weaving student had never woven before and created nine metres of woven fabric on her holiday with us, using the flying shuttle.
Discover the joy of learning to weave in a stunningly beautiful landscape, by joining our authentic Kerala weaving workshop! Help to halt the decline in handloom weaving in this area and support sustainability in the heart of the cotton handloom industry in Kerala by by choosing to join us. Your weaving tutor is a local English speaking master weaver of 25 years experience supported by the workshop’s owner and master weaver of 50 years experience.
We are very excited about meeting our second intake of weaving enthusiasts All we need is YOU to join us in heavenly North Kerala to soak up all the knowledge and skill that our fabulous local craftsmen have to offer. Return home refreshed and renewed after your tranquil, restorative Kerala craft retreat among the swaying palms and ocean sounds of Kizhunna Beach.
Kerala family owned and run 3 star rustic beach house on an idyllic palm fringed secluded beach near Kannur with delicious home cooked Kerala cuisine and outstanding hospitality and service. Full board is included in your package.
Basic but pretty rooms with comfortable beds that give direct access onto the golden sands of this unspoilt beach. Some with air conditioning, all with fan and ensuite bathrooms.
No road access, a five minute walk through the palms takes you to the drop off/ pick up point.
Shops and restaurants: 20 minutes into nearby Kannur.
Welcome on arrival and transfer to your secluded beach resort near Kannur, north Kerala for the duration of your 14 day weaving holiday. Chera Rocks Beach resort is tucked away among the palms on a virually untouched golden stretch of beach over two kilometre long. Check in and enjoy a free day to acclimatize and settle in. Choose to arrive a day early to fully relax into the India vibe. Kerala has a tropical climate, with temperatures around 30C in October. After an introduction to the holiday, enjoy an inclusive home cooked dinner of Kerala cuisine.
An introduction to the weaving retreat with our master weaver at the small weaving studio, just a five minute drive or 15 minute walk away.
Each participant will have their own dedicated traditional
‘Malabar’ floor loom to work on for the duration of the holiday. Our master weaver will introduce you to your loom.
All aspects of setting up the loom and working with cotton on the loom will be covered today before starting on your woven pieces tomorrow.
Start your weaving project and begin to learn the weaving technique you have chosen, whether it’s mat weaving with the flat shuttle or weaving with the flying shuttle.
Weft yarn colours are pr-ordered so you can start straight away. You will have already have chosen your weft colours for your project – either a length of running fabric using the flying shuttle, or a set of 6 table mats or a larger mat for your bathroom or bedroom.
Spend the morning on your weaving projects with the support of our master weaver.
After lunch, experience a wonderfully scenic drive up into the mountains behind Kannur into the Wyanad region of Kerala in the Western Ghats
Your character resort for two nights is set high in the mountains on the edge of the rain forest in the spice and coffee plantations of Wyanad.
Relax at your mountain hideaway, enjoying the sounds and sights of nature with a vast array of birdlife and walking trails into the forests and surrounding spice and coffee plantation.
Walking with a guide can be pre-arranged to learn all about the spices and different types of coffee grown here or just take it easy with a book or binoculars to enjoy the mountain views and birdlife.
Cycling and wildlfe expeditions can be pre – arranged for an extra charge.
Work at your own pace this week with the support of our master weaver , to finish your weaving project. Weave only in the morning and explore locally in the afternoons, or weave all day and enjoy a welcome late afternoon swim in the sea next to your beach side room. Included in the package are :
The end of your textile and culture journey with us for now. Enjoy a free transfer to Kozhikode or Kannur International Airports for return flights to all destinations or to Kannur railway station for journeys south to Kochi.
Thank you for letting us share with you the extraordinary everyday of life in Kannur and Wyanad and for helping to raise the profile of weavers, spinners, dyers, and all Keralan artisans by spending time with us in this beautiful land between the sea and the mountains.
We hope this gentle introduction to Kerala will nourish and rejuvenate you and we look forward to welcoming you back soon to explore more of Gods Own Country with us.
Our original aim as a company was to provide our textile loving guests with a wonderful South Indian textile and culture experience on our personally researched and curated textile tours, supporting artisans along our route. A portion of any profit would be reinvested into the development and marketing of the handloom weavers locally.
An opportunity arose a year ago for Textile Travels to renovate a small weaving studio, very near to our favourite palm fringed beach hideaway, Chera Rocks Beach House, in Kannur, the centre of the handloom industry in Kerala. A plan was hatched to hold weaving workshops here, so that the skills of the master weavers in Kerala that have flourished here for centuries, could be passed on and spread to intrepid weavers, passionate about continuing this heritage craft in their home regions or just curious to learn this traditional heriatge skill.
To renovate the studio, we used some of the small profit from past year’s tours to repair the looms, replaster the walls, repair and re-tile parts of the roof, install a new concrete floor, install power to run a fan and a daylight strip light over each loom.
We are very happy to now invite 4 weaving enthusiasts who would like to learn to weave, from beginner to advanced. Spending a glorious undisturbed two weeks at their own dedicated loom, exploring the Kannur legacy of high quality handloom weaving.
An English speaking master weaver of 25 years experience will guide you through the intricacies of weaving on these heritage wooden Malabar frame looms, and be there to support you throughout your stay. You’ll be able to take home whatever you choose to weave, from however many metres of running fabric you create to a floor mat or set of table mats, if you choose mat weaving.
Cotton grown and spun in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu will be the yarn that we will be using for the warp and the weft, with an opportunity to use some naturally dyed weft threads.
Kannur first became a centre for weaving cotton in the 16th Century when the Royal house of Chirakkal, just north of Kannur, invited skilled weavers from the Chaliya weaving community in Tamil Nadu to settle in Kannur to weave fine cottons for the Royal family.
In the 19th Century, the Basel Mission, a Swiss evangelical missionary society, set up their first weaving factory in 1852 in Kannur to provide work for Kannur’s Christian converts. They played a significant role in modernizing the handloom industry, introducing new weaving techniques, such as the flying shuttle, invented and patented by John Kay of Bury, Lancashire, in 1733. The flying shuttle transformed the speed that cotton could be woven, especially on a narrow loom.
The shuttle was described as travelling at “a speed which cannot be imagined, so great that the shuttle can only be seen like a tiny cloud which disappears in the same instant”
On a wide loom, where there used to be two weavers, one to send and one to catch the shuttle between the warp threads, at each side of the loom, one man could now easily weave a bedsheet single handedly.
Spinning workshops were also introduced by the Mission. A patented spinning machine made in Warrington in the UK was shipped to Kannur to spin the cotton that produced the finest satin faced cotton that Kannur is famous for and still produces today.
,The Basel Mission based their wooden framed floor looms on the looms used in Manchester in the 1850’s. They could be made in all widths and are known now in Kerala as Malabar looms. These can be as wide as a king size bedsheet, and haven’t altered radically since 1852. They’re still in everyday use in the workshops and factories of Kannur today, maintained by a dedicated small band of skilled carpenters who have detailed knowledge of the loom construction and maintenance passed down the family generations to them.
The most successful cotton fabric that Kannur produced was during the 1970’s when ‘cheesecloth’ a slightly stretchy, loosely woven cotton crepe was incredibly popular in the West, with embroidery or stripes on hippy shirts and floaty dresses, it created a boom for Kannur’s handloom and powerloom industry, where it was known as Kannur Crepe. I remember buying one such treasured shirt from Chelsea Girl as a teenager!
Since then the handloom industry in Kannur has been on the decline, with power looms replacing the old wooden Malabar hand looms in many small workshops. Greater productivity means better renumeration, as handloom weavers earn wages at the bottom end of the wage scale. They are not respected locally for their skills, a construction worker earns more, and the fabric they create does not hold any attraction for many of the younger Keralite generation who look to the West for branded clothing and modernity. To this generation, handloom seems like an archaic product that, although embodying their heritage, often has no place in their lives except for official wear, traditional ceremony and ritual. Handloom is a premium product and many locals are not prepared to, or are unable to pay the extra for this heritage cloth.
With interest in handloom weaving increasing in the West as a sustainable method of making cloth, especially if using natural dyes to colour yarns, it seems an opportune moment to try to pass on the incredible skills of the cotton weaving community in Kannur, if not to young locals, then to weaving enthusiasts from farther afield before these skills are lost forever.
We would love to build on and develop this initiative, so we will be organising more retreats in 2028. If you would like to be informed about future weaving opportunities in North Kerala please sign up to our mailing list here
