Fresh Lime Soda Prints

Bagru print, long story short
A long time ago, to be specific, 350 years ago, before hand block printing was a rage, people from Chippa community invented a technique to make fabrics look pretty. To be honest, they were the OG fashion designers who gave a character to off-white and mono tone fabrics. This community carved out wooden blocks in various designs, dipped them in natural dyes that were mostly black, red and maroon in colour, and hand printed these block designs on natural fabrics. This style of printing was named Bagru, after the town this community lived in.  At Fresh Lime Soda, we have taken inspiration from Chippa community’s artistry and vision, to give our clothes a character that we believe people will relate to in today’s modern times.

Dabu print, the origin story
This style of printing originated in China, but let’s focus on what happened when it travelled all the way to Akola, a small town in Rajasthan which is famous for Dabu prints. Akolites made this technique their own and called it Dabana. Today, it is commonly known as resist print technique, which is basically covering the print with a local mud paste. This way when the fabric is dyed in either indigo or kashish, the dye won’t seep over the printed designs. At Fresh Lime Soda, we use this technique to achieve unique designs to resonate with your chill vibe. Our favourite part is washing off the mud paste, to see how the empty-undyed spots turn into beautiful patterns.

Hand Block Printing
When humans looked at wood, they thought of burning it for warmth. A crazy few on the other hand thought of hand carving blocks of wood and dipping them in ink and then stamping them on fabrics. Who would have thought this would inspire generations!

Today handblock printing is a very popular art form. The process has remained more or less the same but now we have a variety of colours in the form of pigments to experiment with!