Sandlin Lace Wholesale: You Are Buying Net You Will Cut Off

A tailor in Chandni Chowk once handed me a bill and a finished dupatta at the same time and asked me to explain the gap between them. He had booked nine inch sandlin lace. The border on the dupatta measured six and a half inches. Nothing had been stolen. Two and a half inches of net had gone into his own dustbin, cut off by his own karigar, paid for at nine inch rates.

That is the whole commercial story of this category in one sentence. Sandlin is a lace where the net ground keeps going after the embroidery stops, so the width on the bill and the width on the garment are two different numbers. Most buyers only ever write down the first one.

Quick answer: Measure the embroidered band separately from the full width before you agree a rate. Expect to lose half an inch to two inches of net per side. Treat the net ground colour as visible, not as packaging. Check whether the edge is finished or raw, since a finished scallop saves you a stitching operation. Confirm the repeat divides into your border length. Delhi trade rates run roughly Rs 180 to Rs 1,400 per metre.

The number on the bill is not the number on the garment

Take a steel rule to the sample before anything else. Measure across the full piece from raw edge to raw edge. Then measure only the band where embroidery actually sits, from the outermost stitch on one side to the outermost stitch on the other. Write both down. The difference is your net margin, split between the two sides, usually unevenly.

Sandlin is normally offered between five and twelve inches full width. The margin inside that runs from about half an inch a side on a tightly worked piece up to two inches a side on a light design where the maker was generous with the ground. On a nine inch lace that is the difference between eight inches of usable border and five.

Your usable width is the embroidered band plus whatever margin you deliberately keep, either for a seam allowance or because a little bare net either side is part of the look. That is a design choice you make once, then apply to every metre. Decide it at the counter rather than in the stitching room, because once you know your usable width you can compare two laces at different rates honestly. The running builds in our sandlin lace collection are listed with the full width, so the band measurement is the one you take yourself.

Trimming surplus net is a stitching room job with a cost

Somebody has to remove that net. On a straight border it is a scissor pass along the outermost stitch line, slow but simple. The risk is that fine tulle cut with scissors leaves a whiskery edge that shows through on a sheer dupatta, so the cut has to sit close enough to the stitching to be hidden by it.

The alternative is a heat cut, done with a hot blade or a fine soldering tip. Synthetic tulle seals as it cuts, which gives a clean edge that will not fray. It also leaves a slightly stiff bead along the cut plus it discolours on pale grounds if the tip runs too hot. On ivory or blush bridal work that faint amber line is very hard to disguise, so test it on a scrap from the same card before committing a whole lehenga panel.

Either way, put a number on it. Two rupees a metre of labour on a lace you have booked three hundred metres of is six hundred rupees that never appeared on any quotation. It is small. It is also invisible until you go looking for it, which is exactly why it eats margins quietly.

The net ground stays visible, so its colour is a decision

This is where sandlin behaves unlike a solid trim. On most laces the ground is structural and gets covered. Here, if you keep any margin at all, the reader sees bare net either side of the work. On a georgette or organza dupatta they see it against light with skin or a contrast ground behind it.

So the net has to be approved the way a fabric is approved, not the way a trim is. Lay the lace on the actual garment cloth rather than on the shop counter. Look at it under a tubelight then carry it to the door for daylight. A tulle that reads as a clean match under warm shop light very often reads pink or grey in daylight, because the two are dyed on different fibres in different baths and they shift at different rates. That mismatch is the single most common reason a boutique rejects a finished piece it approved as components.

If you cannot get an exact match, stop trying and go deliberate instead. A net a clear shade darker than the garment reads as an intended outline. A net half a shade off reads as a mistake. There is no safe middle. When the border is going onto a net garment anyway, matching gets easier, because you can pull the ground from the same family in our net fabric range plus keep one fibre across the whole piece.

Sandlin lace builds plus Delhi trade rates

Read that table across rather than down. The third row costs about twice the second but delivers roughly forty percent more usable band, which sounds like poor value until you notice it also arrives with a finished scalloped edge that removes an operation. Rate per inch of usable border, with the stitching saved counted in, is the only comparison that survives contact with a real order.

A finished edge can delete a stitching operation

Look hard at both long edges. One of three things is true. Both edges are raw net, meaning both need trimming plus turning or binding. One edge is finished with a scallop or a satin band while the other is raw, which is the usual bridal build. Or both are finished, which is rare plus priced accordingly.

A finished edge is applied straight to the garment and left showing. No facing, no binding, no turned hem. On a lehenga ghera that runs four metres or more it is a real saving in karigar hours plus it also removes the risk of a bulky turned edge dragging the hemline out of shape.

A scalloped edge carries one condition. Scallops follow a curve happily because each lobe can shift slightly against its neighbour, but they cannot be shortened mid run without cutting a lobe in half, which always looks like damage. So on a scalloped sandlin your finished length has to land on a whole number of scallops. Measure the scallop pitch, divide it into your ghera or your dupatta end, then adjust the seam position rather than the lace.

On a wide lace the repeat is long enough to be seen

Narrow trim repeats every two or three inches, so nobody notices where a repeat starts. Wide sandlin repeats every ten to thirty inches, which means a single dupatta end shows only two or three full motifs. At that scale the eye reads the arrangement, not the texture.

The practical consequence appears at the two ends of one dupatta. If the repeat does not divide into your border length, the left end finishes mid motif while the right end finishes on a complete one. Nobody can say what is wrong when they look at it. They only say the piece looks off balance, which is worse than a fault you can name.

Fix it at cutting rather than at finishing. Measure one full repeat, decide where the motif should sit at each end, then cut both ends to the same point in the repeat even if it wastes a few inches. Budget four to eight percent extra length on repeats above about eighteen inches. On a plain or continuous design you can skip this entirely, which is a genuine reason to prefer a running vine build for volume orders.

Order tiers plus holding one card across a season

The top tier exists because of the ground, not the embroidery. Thread shades are easy to hold. A tulle dye lot is not, since fine net takes dye unevenly enough that two lots of the same ivory will read differently when a bare margin of each sits next to the other on a garment. Book the net lot rather than the design number if a wedding line has to stay consistent from September through February.

Get four things onto the bill: full width, embroidered band width, edge type on each side plus the net lot reference. The first is what you pay on. The other three are what decide whether the goods actually work.

What to settle before a sandlin lace booking

• Measure the embroidered band, not just the full width. The gap between the two is net you pay for then throw away.
• Test the trim method on a scrap first. Heat cutting seals a synthetic tulle but can leave an amber line on ivory.
• Approve the net ground against the real garment cloth in daylight. Warm shop light hides a mismatch that the door will show you in seconds.
• Note the edge type on each side in writing. A finished scallop removes a facing operation, which changes the true cost of the lace.
• Divide the repeat into your border length before cutting. Two ends of one dupatta must stop at the same point in the design.
• Record the net lot reference on the bill. Tulle dye lots drift more than thread shades do.

Sandlin lace questions buyers bring to the counter

What is sandlin lace actually made of?

Sandlin is a trade name in the Delhi market rather than a fibre or a weave, which is why no textbook lists it. What arrives under that name is consistent enough to work with: an embroidered border built on a fine machine made net, most often nylon or polyester tulle, carrying thread work with some mix of sequin, katdana, zari or stone on top. The ground is what defines the category, since the net runs on past the design instead of stopping at it. Because the name describes a build rather than a material, never accept it alone on a quotation. Ask for full width, ground fibre plus the surface materials listed separately. Two pieces both correctly called sandlin can differ in usable band by three inches plus in rate by four hundred rupees a metre.

How much width do I actually lose when the net is trimmed?

Between half an inch and two inches per side, so between one inch and four inches off the full width. Light designs on a generous ground sit at the top of that range, tightly worked bridal bands at the bottom. Nobody can quote it for you because it depends on how the design was placed on the net at the embroidery stage, which varies card to card even within one supplier. Measure it yourself on the sample with a steel rule, from the outermost stitch on one side to the outermost stitch on the other. Then treat the result as the real width for every calculation you do afterwards, including the comparison against a competing lace at a different rate. Buyers who skip this step routinely pay nine inch money for six inch goods without ever knowing.

Can sandlin lace be used as a panel rather than as a border?

Yes, plus at the wider builds it is often the cheaper route to a heavy look. A ten inch sandlin run across a lehenga kali or down a kurta front gives you worked surface without buying embroidered fabric by the metre. Two conditions apply. First, the net ground has almost no body, so a panel needs a backing cloth or a lining behind it or the garment will collapse where the panel sits. Second, panels put the lace under different stress from a hem, since a border only ever gets a light seam while a panel gets seamed on all four sides plus pressed. Keep the seam line outside the embroidery, never through it, because a needle driven through a stone or a katdana line breaks the bead plus deflects the stitch.

Will the net ground pucker or shrink after the garment is stitched?

The net itself barely moves, since nylon and polyester tulle are close to dimensionally stable. The problem is the pairing. If you apply a stable synthetic lace to a cotton, chanderi or viscose ground that shrinks three to six percent, the garment cloth pulls in while the lace stays put, which shows as a rippled hem after the first wash or steam. Pre shrink the garment fabric before the lace goes on, always. On a lace that will meet a moving ground, apply with a slightly eased hand rather than stretched tight, plus use a fine needle with a lock stitch that has some give in it. The second thing to watch is the opposite failure, where a lace applied under tension relaxes later plus makes the hem wavy. Let the lace sit flat and unrolled for a few hours before it is stitched down.

Booking sandlin lace at trade rates

If you run a boutique, a label or a reselling line, the working route to trade pricing on sandlin is the wholesale programme. You get card rates, full width plus embroidered band width both stated on the quotation rather than left to a measurement argument, edge type declared for each side, net ground fibre confirmed, rolled dispatch on a wide card so the work is not creased across a fold, net lot reference printed on every bill for reorder matching plus ground lot bookings where one tulle run carries a whole wedding season. See the tiers and register on our wholesale fabric page to open your first bulk sandlin order.