What is Farat?

Farat weaving is a traditional textile for weaving beautiful and colorful local fabrics that is used for towels, shawls, scarves, buns, night tents, pajamas, under shirts, tents, etc.

Most of the craftsmen in this profession are women who have learned the art of weaving from their mothers;

The art is more than 150 years old and still has its place among the types of traditional and industrial fabrics and can even compete with many of them.

Khorasan women produce farats in home workshops, and this art is usually inherited from mother to daughter in a family, and girls weave cloth alongside their mothers.

The width of this braid is 50 to 70 cm and its length reaches up to 70 meters.

This art is hand-woven and the fibers used in the fabrics are usually of colorful silk and in vivid and cheerful colors, but now, wool and cotton yarns are also used for weaving, with patterns.

Geometric and mostly woven in a checkered pattern, mostly on a red background.

The motifs are a reflection of the unaffected life of a rural artist who, inspired by nature and the space around him, engraves on the fabric in a very simple and far from complicated way, and flowers, plants and birds can be seen in abundance.

The flower symbolizes spirituality and tenderness, the butterfly symbolizes the connection of the earth with the sky and respect for nature and understanding of the world around.

Weaving and preparing various textiles such as towels, night tents, tablecloths, blankets and underwear by spun cotton or silk yarns in Khorasan province is called

“farat weaving” or “ton weaving”.

The farat weaving machine is four-way, but due to the density and large number of threads, the words are tied together in pairs and have a special shoulder (usually a reed).

This woven hand, like Jajim, is double. The width of this weave is 50 to 70 cm and its length reaches up to 70 meters. Its yarn used is 16-yarn cotton yarn, and sometimes synthetic silk yarns are also used for weaving.

A machine called a “Farat” was used to make the fabric. The individual device consists of simple components that are set up in a room for this purpose.

After selecting the colors, the yarns were brought to the workshop. In the workshop, a part was set aside for the weaver to sit. Two pedals under the weaver’s foot and a shoulder in front of him, a few macaws with colorful threads inside.