This will be the first of a series of articles that chronicles the amount of obsessive attention to detail that went into engineering your gis. In this article, we will walk you through the painstaking process of preparing the fabric for cut-and-sew phase of production.

Receiving the hemp fabric

Our fabric is typically shipped to us in 160cm long rolls called bolts and are arranged on pallets.

The fabric comes in a raw unprocessed state typically referred to as " greige " fabric.

It has simply been woven from spools of hemp yarn, and has not been washed, dried, bleached, or dyed.

Washing the fabric

Industrial washing machines are used to wash the hefty rolls of fabric. This is the first step in ensuring that our gis do not shrink once you receive them and wash them.

Drying the fabric

As you can see, after the first two washes and dries we've eliminated a substantial amount of shrinkage.

Fabric width before preshrinking process 160cm Fabric width after preshrinking process 150cm Shrinkage (%) 6.25%

Dyeing and the finished product

The dye process involves a couple more wash and dry cycles to remove excess particles of dye and to prevent crocking and bleeding. Notice that we further eliminate shrinkage by 8%.

Dye type Reactive Fabric width before dyeing process 150cm Fabric width after dyeing process 138cm Shrinkage (%) 8%

All told, the fabric is washed and dried 3.5 times.

A wash rate of 3.5 is only used in high-end garments.

By the time the time you receive your gi, you will experience less than 1.5% shrinkage!

Before processing 160cm After processing 138cm Overall Shrinkage (%) 7.5%

Next up, we'll walk you through the cut-and-sew phase of production.