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Links Making Textiles Picking
removed foreign matter (dirt, insects,
leaves, seeds) from the fiber. Early pickers beat the fibers to loosen them
and removed debris by hand. Machines used rotating teeth to do the job, producing
a thin "lap" ready for carding.
Picking
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By Hand
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By Machine
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Carding
combed the fibers to align and join them
into a loose rope called a "sliver." Hand carders pulled the fibers
between wire teeth set in boards. Machines did the same thing with rotating
cylinders. Slivers (rhymes with divers) were then combined, twisted, and drawn
out into "roving."
Carding
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By Hand
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By Machine
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Spinning
twisted and drew out the roving and wound
the resulting yarn on a bobbin. A spinning wheel operator drew out the cotton
by hand. A series of rollers accomplished this on machines called "throstles"
and "spinning mules."
Spinning
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By Han
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By Machine
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Warping
gathered yarns from a number of bobbins
and wound them close together on a reel or spool. From there they were transferred
to a warp beam, which was then mounted on a loom. Warp threads were those
that ran lengthwise on the loom.
Warping
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By Hand
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By Machine
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Weaving
was the final stage in making cloth. Crosswise
woof threads were interwoven with warp threads on a loom. A 19th century power
loom worked essentially like a hand loom, except that its actions were mechanized.
Weaving
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By Hand
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By Machine
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Like food and shelter,
clothing is a basic human requirement. When settled neolithic cultures discovered
the advantages of woven fibers over animal hides, the making of cloth, drawing
on basketry techniques, emerged as one of humankind's fundamental technologies.
From the earliest hand-held spindle and distaff and basic hand loom to the highly
automated spinning machines and power looms of today, the principles of turning
vegetable fiber into cloth have remained constant: Plants are cultivated and the
fiber harvested. The fibers are cleaned and aligned, then spun into yarn or thread.
Finally the yarns are interwoven to produce cloth. Today we also spin complex
synthetic fibers, but they are still woven together the way cotton and flax were
millennia ago.
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