How is cloth made? – Saskia, age 5, Sydney
Hello Saskia, that’s a terrific query!
From garments to curtains, towels and sheets, materials are all over the place in our every day lives. You may additionally hear folks name them “textiles”.
Folks have been making cloth, or textiles, for a really very long time. In truth, they’ve been doing it for nearly 35,000 years!
Let’s first take into consideration what a material is. The dictionary says cloth is a material made by knitting or weaving collectively fibres.
What’s a fibre?
A fibre is sort of a strand of hair. It’s very lengthy and skinny.
Fibres can come from nature. Some frequent pure fibres are cotton, silk and wool.
Uncooked cotton as it’s discovered on the department.
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People have additionally discovered methods to make fibres ourselves up to now 150 years. We will use expertise to show oil into fibres. We will even make particular fibres to make your raincoat waterproof, or make a soldier’s vest bullet-proof.
However how can these skinny, hair-like fibres be made into one thing we are able to put on?
From fibre to yarn
First, we have to put the fibres collectively to make lengthy strings of yarn. This may be tough as a result of many fibres are fairly quick, particularly pure ones.
A cotton fibre is often solely round 3cm lengthy. That’s shorter than a paper clip. Wool is often lower from a sheep when it’s 7.5cm lengthy – concerning the size of a crayon.
We twist these shorter fibres collectively to make an extended yarn. The twisting makes the fibres rub collectively and grip to one another. That is known as yarn spinning.
Yarn spinning
Step one of yarn spinning entails taking bundle of fibres, lining them up, them combing them such as you comb your hair … or the way you may comb an extended beard! In truth, after we’ve combed them right into a sheet, we name it a “beard”.
Earlier than we are able to make wool into cloth, it must be spun into yarn.
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Subsequent, the sheet is stretched into an extended tube. Because it stretches, it turns into thinner and thinner. Then we twist it to type a yarn. This delicate sheet of fibres could have been metres extensive to start with, however we twist it into a skinny thread.
There are all sorts of yarn threads. They are often skinny, thick, laborious, tender, stretchy, and even ones you’ll be able to’t lower! All of it depends upon the beginning fibre and the machine settings.
Turning yarn into cloth
As soon as now we have our yarn, we’re able to make cloth. There are numerous methods do that, corresponding to weaving, knitting or felting.
Weaving crosses the yarns over and below in a chessboard sample. Knitting makes loops that go by way of one another.
Weaving yarn into cloth may be achieved by hand, or by machine.
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Felting is after we get wool fibres moist and soapy. We rub the fibres collectively till they’re all snarled. Then we press the fibres right into a flat sheet known as felt.
Weaving, knitting and felting may be very sluggish in the event you do them by hand! As of late we regularly use machines to hurry issues up.
How cloth is made
So we begin with the fibre. Then we spin it into lengthy strings of yarn. Subsequent we weave, knit or felt the yarn into cloth. And that, Saskia, is how we make cloth.
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