Allover Embroidery Fabric Wholesale: What Coverage Density Really Costs You

Wholesale Reference Guides · 14 minute read · Updated 15 October 2026

Two thaans on the counter. Both sold to you as allover embroidery, both on the same georgette base, both in the same shade family.

One is quoted at Rs 600 a metre. The other is Rs 1,900. Neither seller is lying to you.

Allover describes where the work sits, not how much of it there is. So the entire buying decision on this category comes down to grading a number that almost nobody puts on a quotation.

Grade the coverage against daylight and name the band before you ask for a rate. Everything after that is a question of ground weight and quantity.

The word allover describes layout. Two rolls both sold as allover can differ threefold in cost.

Quick answer: On allover embroidery fabric you are buying coverage density, not design. Hold the cloth to daylight and judge how much ground still shows, then weigh a metre, since weight tracks density and weight is what decides drape. Match density to ground weight rather than to taste. Check the frame join across the width, where spacing plus shade both shift. On a reorder, ask for a full-width cutting rather than a small square, because a square cannot show you a join line or a shade band. Delhi trade rates run roughly Rs 420 to Rs 2,600 per metre. You can see how the coverage bands read against each other across running designs in the allover embroidered fabric collection at Paras Gallery Fabrics.

What you are actually buying is the freedom to cut anywhere

Start with why this category exists at all. On placed goods the work has to land somewhere specific, so every cut is planned around it.

Allover goods remove that constraint. A blouse, a kurta yoke, a sleeve, a lehenga panel can all come out of the same length in whatever order the marker plan prefers.

For a boutique running mixed orders that is worth real money. Your cutting wastage falls to whatever the pattern shapes leave behind, with no dead length added for placement. A single thaan can serve four different garments in a week. Nothing else on the embroidered shelf behaves that way.

Which is exactly why the category gets abused. Because there is no placement to check, buyers grade allover goods the way they grade a plain fabric, by look plus hand feel, then negotiate on rate. The one variable that moves the price threefold never gets measured.

Grade coverage by how much ground you can still see

There is no industry number for this, so use your eyes in a repeatable way. Hold a single layer up against a window in daylight, at arm's length, then judge what reads first, the ground or the work.

Four bands cover almost everything on a Delhi counter.

• Open coverage. Motifs sit clearly apart. The ground colour is what the eye reads from across a room, with the work giving texture. Light, cheap to produce, forgiving on drape.
• Medium coverage. Ground and work read about equally, with motifs close enough to touch or nearly touch. This is the workhorse band for festive suits plus daywear sarees.
• Close coverage. The work dominates, ground shows only as gaps between motifs. Heavier, considerably dearer, mostly used where the garment has to carry a room.
• Blind coverage. Almost no ground visible at all. Usually bead, sequin or heavy thread built up until the base is a carrier rather than a surface.

Write the band on your enquiry before you ask for a rate. It changes the conversation completely, because a seller who knows you have graded the cloth will not offer you an open coverage against a close coverage quotation.

Density decides drape long before it decides price

Here is the failure boutiques repeat every season. A close coverage is chosen on a soft base because the sample square looked rich on the counter. The suit is stitched and it hangs like board. Nobody can point to a defect, yet the garment is wrong.

Embroidery adds weight plus it adds stiffness, because every stitch pins the ground yarns and stops them sliding. A fabric that drapes by yarn movement loses that movement as coverage climbs. Fine georgette, chinon plus soft net all drape by movement. Put a blind coverage on them and you have removed the property you paid for the base to have.

So match the two. Open to medium coverage belongs on the fluid grounds where fall matters, which is most saree, dupatta plus flared kurta work. Close to blind coverage belongs on grounds that were structured to begin with, meaning net, organza, silk, tissue or a firmer georgette, where the design intends the cloth to hold a shape.

Weigh a metre if you can. Weight per metre is the honest version of a coverage grade, plus it is the number your tailor will care about once the garment is lined.

What allover work costs in the Delhi market, by density band

This is the table I pull out at the counter. Read it down the ground column rather than across the price column.

The bands above are Delhi wholesale working ranges. Embroidery rates move with thread, bead plus sequin input costs, so read them as a range to argue from rather than a fixed number, then confirm the day's rate before you book.

Most costing mistakes on allover goods are not about paying too much. They are about buying the right density on the wrong base. The broader embroidered shelf is worth walking through first if you want to compare the same coverage band across three different grounds before committing.

The three allover buys and how to stock each

The table above tells you what each cloth is. These three cards tell you how to treat it on a rail. Most boutiques need all three in different proportions.

The frame join is the seam nobody tells you about

Embroidery frames are narrower than most fabric widths, so a full panna of allover work is produced in runs that meet somewhere across the width. Where two runs meet you get a join line. On good goods it is invisible. On rushed goods it announces itself.

Two things shift at the join. Spacing first, because the operator sets the start of the second run by eye plus a few millimetres of error reads as a visible channel or an overlap down the length. Shade second, since a fresh cone of thread from a different lot will not match perfectly, plus on a large flat panel the eye picks up a shade step it would never notice on scattered motifs.

Open the thaan to full width at the counter and walk your eye across it. Then decide where the join will fall on your garment. A join running down a lehenga panel front is a rejection. The same join sitting inside a side seam or under a pleat costs you nothing.

This is one of the few faults you can design around instead of returning, provided you know it is there before the cloth is cut.

The cutting that tells you whether a reorder will match

Those checks only mean something on the right piece of cloth. This is where most first allover orders go wrong.

Most swatch habits are borrowed from plain cloth, where a small square genuinely represents the roll. On allover goods a small square represents almost nothing. It cannot show you a frame join, because the join sits somewhere across the full width. It cannot show you a shade band, because banding only appears over length. It cannot even show you the repeat reliably, since a four inch square may fall entirely inside one motif group.

So ask for a cutting rather than a swatch. Full usable width, at least half a metre along the length, taken from the lot that would actually be dispatched to you rather than the reference piece living on the counter shelf. That gives you one complete width, so any join line is inside the piece, plus enough length to see whether the spacing holds. It costs the seller a little more and it is a reasonable ask on a booking of any size. If a seller will only give you a square, treat that as information about the goods rather than about their generosity.

Write four things on the tag before it goes in your file: the lot reference, the date you took it, the coverage band as you graded it plus the usable width in inches after the selvedge. A cutting with no lot reference is decoration. A cutting with one is the only evidence you will have when a second lot arrives.

Then there is the comparison itself, which boutiques almost always do wrong. Do not hold the two cuttings up and look at the motifs, because the motifs are the part copied exactly from the same design file. Lay both flat, same face up, at the same angle to a window, then look at the ground between the motifs. Shade drift shows in the ground first, since the ground is a flat open field and your eye reads it as one colour.

After that, weigh equal squares cut from each. A second lot worked at a slightly different stitch setting carries a different weight per metre, which is the difference your tailor feels even when the shade matches perfectly. Density drift is the fault nobody checks for, because everybody is busy checking colour.

Minimum order quantity and where the rate breaks

Every new bulk buyer in allover embroidery asks the same question. Where does the rate break. Here is the honest structure most Delhi suppliers work with, ours included.

The top tier buys something the others cannot. When a whole run is worked in one booking the thread comes off one lot plus the frames stay set, so shade continuity holds from the first thaan to the last. Anyone stitching a garment that uses three or four cut lengths together will feel the difference immediately. Anyone reordering the same design six weeks later will feel its absence.

Whatever the tier, put three things on the bill instead of a design number: coverage band as you graded it, usable width in inches after the selvedge, plus the lot or batch reference. The lot reference is the only thing that gives a reorder any chance of matching. If you buy allover goods often enough that reorders are normal rather than occasional, ask for the tiers plus the lot-continuity options in writing before you book the first thaan.

Three faults that only surface after the cloth is cut

These are the ones a coverage grade will not warn you about. Each has a test you can run in under a minute.

• Needle damage. Dense work on a fine ground means thousands of penetrations per square inch, plus a blunt or oversized needle leaves permanent pinholes. Hold a suspect area to light and look at the ground between motifs. Scattered bright points mean the ground has been perforated, so the panel will run or tear along the stitch line under stress. Invisible against a counter light, obvious against a window.
• Backing residue. Heavier allover work is stabilised with a backing paper or film that is torn away afterward. On close coverage the fragments trapped under stitches never come out, which is what makes some allover goods feel papery rather than soft. Crush a corner in your fist and release it. Cloth that crackles has backing still in it, plus that will not improve after stitching.
• Shade banding. Different from the join line. Long runs on one design get worked in sittings, so a band of slightly deeper colour can appear across the width where a session changed. Roll out four or five metres rather than judging a folded sample, because banding is only visible over length.

Common mistakes bulk buyers make on allover goods

• Negotiating the rate before grading the band. You cannot argue a price on a cloth whose single biggest cost driver you have not measured.
• Buying density on looks. The sample square decides nothing about how a finished garment hangs. Ground weight does.
• Judging a folded piece. Banding needs length and the frame join needs full width. A folded sample hides both.
• Taking the shelf swatch. Sequin density plus base weight drift between runs of the same design number. Ask for the dispatch lot.
• Comparing reorders on the motifs. The motifs are identical by definition. The open ground is where drift shows.
• No lot reference on the bill. The commonest reason a reorder cannot be matched is that nobody recorded what to match it against.

What to do at the counter

• Before you go: decide your split across the three buys above, then mark which designs are against confirmed orders.
• Step 1: hold every candidate to a window, grade the band, then write it on the enquiry before any rate is discussed.
• Step 2: open each thaan to full width, find the frame join, then decide where it lands on your pattern.
• Step 3: hold the ground to light for pinholes, crush a corner for backing, then roll out four or five metres for banding.
• Step 4: ask for a full-width cutting from the dispatch lot plus how many metres of that lot remain.
• Then confirm: tag the cutting with lot reference, date, band plus usable width, then get the same three on the bill.

Questions bulk buyers ask me at the counter

Is allover embroidery always more expensive than placed embroidery?

Per metre, usually yes, since more of the surface carries work. Per finished garment, often no. Placed goods force you to cut around a fixed motif position, so a share of every length is dead cloth that you paid for and cannot use. Allover goods let the marker plan sit wherever it likes, which pulls cutting wastage down to the pattern shapes alone. For a boutique cutting several garment types from one design the total frequently lands lower on allover even at a higher rate per metre. Run the comparison on cost per garment rather than on the quotation, plus include the offcut you would have carried on the placed alternative.

How do I compare two allover quotations that look identical?

Put both samples against daylight side by side and grade the coverage band first, because that single difference accounts for most price gaps in this category. Then compare usable width after the selvedge, since two rolls quoted at the same rate can differ by four or five inches of cuttable cloth, which changes your yield per metre. Third, weigh equal squares from each. Weight is the closest thing to an objective density reading you can take at a counter. Only after those three should you look at component quality, meaning bead finish, thread lustre plus stitch tension. Sellers expect the last conversation and rarely expect the first three.

Why does the same allover design look different on two grounds?

Because the ground contributes at least half of what the eye reads. A net base lets light through between motifs, so the work appears to float plus the design reads open even at medium coverage. The same design on satin sits against a solid reflective surface, so it reads heavier and the shade of the thread shifts against the sheen. Organza sits in between, holding shape while still passing light. This is why a design number alone is never a reorder instruction. Specify design plus ground plus coverage band together, or you will approve a sample that looks nothing like the goods you remember.

How big a cutting should I ask for on allover goods?

Full usable width, at least half a metre long, taken from the lot that would be dispatched to you rather than the shelf reference. The width matters because the frame join sits somewhere across it, so a narrow piece can miss the one fault you most need to see. The length matters because shade banding only appears over a run, never inside a few inches. Tag the cutting with the lot reference, the date, the coverage band as you graded it plus the usable width after the selvedge. On a reorder, lay the new cutting flat beside the tagged one, same face up, at the same angle to a window, then compare the open ground between the motifs rather than the motifs themselves. Finish by weighing equal squares from both, since a density shift survives a shade match.

Does allover fabric need lining on every garment?

It depends on component type rather than on density. Thread work on an opaque ground usually needs no lining beyond what the silhouette calls for. Anything with bead, sequin, katdana or cutdana needs a lining because the reverse of the work sits against skin and the knots abrade. Sheer grounds need lining regardless of coverage, since gaps between motifs are see-through by design. Budget the lining as part of the fabric decision rather than as a stitching afterthought, because on close coverage goods the lining choice also affects how the finished garment hangs.