Textile manufacturing by pre-industrial methods
is one of the oldest of human activities. The oldest known textiles date back to about 5000 B.C. In order to make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fibre from which a yarn can be made, primarily by spinning. The yarn is processed by knitting or weaving to create cloth. The machine used for weaving is the loom. Cloth is finished by what are described as wet process to become fabric. The fabric may be dyed, printed or decorated by embroidering with coloured yarns.
The three main types of fibres are natural vegetable fibres, animal protein fibres and artificial fibres. Natural vegetable fibres include cotton, linen, jute and hemp. Animal protein fibres include wool and silk. Artificial fibres include nylon and polyester. Almost all commercial textiles are produced by industrial methods. Textiles are still produced by hand in village communities in Asia, Africa and South America and as an artisan craft or hobby in Europe and North America. Traditional practices are also kept alive by artisans in China and Japan; for instance at the Chinese Printed Blue Nankeen Exhibition Hall in Shanghai.
Yarn formation
Vegetable fibres
Flax
The preparations for spinning is similar across most plant fibres, including flax and hemp. Flax is the fibre used to create linen. Cotton is handled differently since it uses the fruit of the plant and not the stem.Harvesting
Flax is pulled out of the ground about a month after the initial blooming when the lower part of the plant begins to turn yellow, and when the most forward of the seeds are found in a soft state. It is pulled in handfuls and several handfuls are tied together with a slip knot into a 'beet'. The string is tightened as the stalks dry. The seed heads are removed and the seeds collected, by threshing and winnowing.Retting
is the process of rotting away the inner stalk, leaving the outer fibres intact. A standing pool of warm water is needed, into which the beets are submerged. An acid is produced when retting, and it would corrode a metal container.At, the retting process takes 4 or 5 days, it takes longer when colder. When the retting is complete the bundles feel soft and slimy. The process can be overdone, and the fibres rot too.
Dressing the flax
Dressing is the removal of the fibres from the straw and cleaning it enough to be spun. The flax is broken, scutched and hackled in this step.Image:BreakingFlax.jpeg|thumb|Breaking flax in pre-revolutionary Perm, Russia
Spinning
Flax can either be spun from a distaff, or from the spinner's lap. Spinners keep their fingers wet when spinning, to prevent fuzzy thread from forming. Usually singles are spun with an "S" twist. After flax is spun it is washed in a pot of boiling water for a couple of hours to set the twist and reduce fuzziness.Many handspinners will buy a roving of flax. This roving is spun in the same manner as above. The rovings may come with very long fibres, or much shorter fibres.
Cotton
is a soft, fluffy staple fibre that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fibre is almost pure cellulose.The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds. The most favoured cottons are the ones with the longest staple as they can be spun into the finest thread. Sea Island and Egyptian are two of these. Surat an Indian species has a short staple. Hand-operated methods of processing remained the preferred way of spinning and weaving the very finest threads and fabrics up until the third quarter of the Nineteenth Century.
Yucca
fibres were at one time widely used throughout Central America for many things. Currently they are mainly used to make twine.Yucca leaves are harvested and then cut to a standard size. The leaves are crushed in between two large rollers producing fibres which are bundled up and dried in the sun over trellises. The dried fibres are combined into rolags which can then be spun. The waste, a strong-smelling pulp, can be used as fertilizer.Animal protein fibres
Wool
is a protein-based fibre, being the coat of the sheep. The coat is removed by shearing.Sheep Shearing
can be done with by hand-shears or powered shears. Professional sheep shearers can shear a sheep in under a minute, without nicking the sheep.The fleece is removed in one piece. Second cuts can be made but produce only short fibres, which are more difficult to spin.
Primitive breeds, like the Scottish Soay sheep have to be plucked, not sheared - a process called 'rooing' - as the kemps are still longer than the soft fleece.
Skirting
Skirting is the disposal of all wool that is unsuitable for spinning. Recovering can be attempted. It can also be done at the same time as carding.Cleaning
The wool is cleaned. At this point the fleece is full of lanolin and often contains extraneous vegetable matter, such as sticks, twigs, burrs and straw. These may all be removed, though lanolin may be left in the wool till after the spinning, a technique known as spinning 'in the grease'. Indeed, if the fabric is to be water-repellent, lanolin is not removed at any stage.Washing the wool can be a tedious process. Some operatives wash it very carefully, a small handful at a time, and then set it out to dry on a table in the sun. Others wash the whole fleece at once. Lanolin is removed by soaking the fleece in very hot water. If the fleece gets agitated, it will become felt, and then spinning is impossible. Felting, done on purpose, can be used to create felt fabrics.
Carding or combing
Although it is possible to spin directly from a clean fleece, it is much easier to spin carded fleece. Carding by hand yields a rolag, a loose woollen roll of fibres. Using a drum carder yields a bat, which is a mat of fibres of a flat, rectangular shape. Carding mills return the fleece in a roving, which is a stretched bat; it is very long and often the thickness of a wrist. A pencil roving is a roving thinned to the width of a pencil. It can be used for knitting without any spinning, or for the training of apprentices.Combing is another method to align the fibres parallel to the yarn, and thus is good for spinning a worsted yarn, whereas the rolag from handcards produces a woolen yarn.
Spinning
Hand spinning can be done by using a spindle or the spinning wheel. Spinning turns the carded wool fibres into yarn which can then be directly woven, knitted, crocheted, or by other means turned into fabric or a garment.The spinning wheel collects the yarn on a bobbin.
A woollen yarn is lightly spun so it is airy, and is a good insulator and suitable for knitting, while a worsted yarn is spun tight to exclude air, and has greater strength and is suited to weaving.
Image:NiddyNoddy.JPG|thumb|right|upright|A niddy noddy ready to have a skein wound on it.
Once the bobbin is full, the hobby spinner either puts on a new bobbin, or forms a skein, or balls the yarn. A skein is a coil of yarn twisted into a loose knot. Yarn is skeined using a niddy noddy or other type of skein-winder. Yarn is rarely balled directly after spinning; it is stored in skein form, and only transferred to a ball when needed. Knitting from a skein is difficult as the yarn forms knots, so in this case it is best to ball. Yarn to be plied is left on the bobbin.
Image:LazyKate.JPG|thumb|right|upright|A lazy kate with bobbins on it in preparation for plying.
A skein is either formed by the hobby spinner, on a niddy noddy or some other type of skein winder. Traditionally niddy-noddys looked like an uppercase "i", with the bottom half rotated 90 degrees. Hobby spinning wheel manufacturers also make niddy-noddys that attach onto the spinning wheel for faster skein-winding.
Plying
yarn is when one takes a strand of spun yarn and spins it together with other strands in order to make a thicker yarn.Regular plying consists of taking two or more singles and twisting them together, then against their twist. This can be done on a spinning wheel or on a spindle. If the yarn was spun clockwise, to ply, the wheel must spin counter-clockwise. This is the most common way. When plying from bobbins a device called a lazy kate is often used to hold them.
Most hobby spinners ply from bobbins. This is easier than plying from balls because there is less chance for the yarn to become tangled and knotted if it is simply unwound from the bobbins. To allow the bobbins to unwind freely, they are put in a device called a lazy kate, or sometimes simply a kate. The simplest lazy kate consists of wooden bars with a metal rod running between them. Most hold between three and four bobbins. The bobbin sits on the metal rod. Other lazy kates are built with devices that create an adjustable amount of tension, so that if the yarn is jerked, a whole bunch of yarn is not wound off, then wound up again in the opposite direction. Some spinning wheels come with a built in lazy kate.
Navajo plying consists of making large loops, similar to crocheting. A loop about long is made on the end of the leader The three strands together are spun in the opposite direction. When a third of the loop remains, a new loop is created and the spinning continues. The process is repeated until the yarn is all plied. The advantage of this method is that only one single is needed and if the single is already dyed, this technique allows it to be plied without ruining the colour scheme. This technique also allows the spinner to try to match up thick and thin spots in the yarn, thus making for a smoother end product.
Washing
If the lanolin is unwanted, and has not already been washed out, this is done now. The skein is tied in six points and steeped overnight in detergent, it is rinsed and air-dried, and re-skeined.Unless the lanolin is to be left in the cloth as a water repellent. When washing a skein it works well to let the wool soak in soapy water overnight, and rinse the soap out in the morning. Dishwashing detergents are commonly used, and a special laundry detergent designed for washing wool is not required. The dishwashing detergent works and does not harm the wool. After washing, let the wool dry. Once it is dry, or just a bit damp, one can stretch it out a bit on a niddy-noddy. Putting the wool back on the niddy-noddy makes for a nicer looking finished skein. Before taking a skein and washing it, the skein must be tied up loosely in about six places. If the skein is not tied up, it will be very hard to unravel when done washing.