About us

The seam is the signature

Yathra can only be woven as wide as the loom allows — roughly a forearm's width. To reach the width of a bed, the weaver makes several narrow panels and joins them by hand. Every yathra producer on earth treats that join as a technical necessity and tries to make it disappear.

We do the opposite. Every panel on every piece we make is joined with the same cream cross-stitch, in the same gauge, left visible. It is the one thing on our cloth that cannot be copied without also copying the loom, the wool and the hands. We call it the Chumey seam, after the valley in Bumthang where yathra weaving began.

If you see one of our throws across a room with no label on it, the cream line running the length of the cloth is how you know.

We price by loom-days

A scarf is a few days on the loom. A rug is two to three weeks. A bed cover can be most of a month. We price by that number, because it is the only figure that describes what a handwoven textile actually costs to make.

It is also why our prices do not move with the season, and why two pieces that look similar can be priced differently. One took longer.

Who we are

The Yarn & Yathra House was founded in 2016 by Karma Tshoki, who learned to weave as a child from her mother, a well-known weaver in Kurjey, Bumthang.

We work from an atelier in Thimphu with a group of women weavers, on long-term terms, at fair wages, with hours that fit around their families. Our showroom is near the Bhutan Postal Museum, and the looms work upstairs. Visitors are welcome to come and watch.

What we make

Bed throws, sofa throws, flat-weave handloom rugs, scarves, shawls and cushions — all in Bhutanese highland sheep wool, apart from one merino wrap.

Nothing is held in quantity. Every piece is woven to order, and no two are identical. Small variations in colour, width and weave are the evidence of the loom.

Where our work has been shown

Our pieces have been selected for Maison&Objet in Paris, are stocked by Selvedge Magazine in the United Kingdom, and have been shown at the Selvedge World Fair.