Weaving
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- This article describes textile weaving. For other senses of this word, see weaving (disambiguation).
Weaving is an ancient textile art and craft that involves placing two sets of threads or yarn made of fiber called the warp and weft of the loom and turning them into cloth. This cloth can be plain (in one color or a simple pattern), or it can be woven in decorative or artistic designs, including tapestries.
The majority of commercial fabrics, in the West, are woven on computer-controlled Jacquard looms. In the past, simpler fabrics were woven on other dobby looms and the Jacquard harness adaptation was reserved for more complex patterns. Some believe the efficiency of the Jacquard loom, and the Jacquard weaving process makes it more economical for mills to use them to weave all of their fabrics, regardless of the complexity of the design. However, an industrialist weaving large runs of simple plain weave fabric may need to be convinced of the logic of investing in Jacquard machines, when a much lower cost loom would suffice.
Handweaving, along with hand spinning, is a popular craft. Weavers use wooden looms to create rugs, fabrics, and tapestries.
Fabric in which the warp and/or weft is tie-dyed before weaving is called ikat. Fabric decorated using a wax resist method is called batik.
Satin weaves, twill weaves, and plain weaves are the 3 basic types of weaving by which the majority of woven products are formed.
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[edit] Process
In general, weaving involves the interlacing of two sets of threads at right angles to each other: the warp and the weft. The warp are held taut and in parallel order by means of a loom. The loom is warped (or dressed) with the warp threads passing through heddles on two or more harnesses. The warp threads are moved up or down by the harnesses creating a space called the shed. The weft thread is wound onto spools called bobbins. The bobbins are placed in a shuttle which carries the weft thread through the shed. The raising/lowering sequence of warp threads gives rise to many possible weave structures from the simplest plain weave (also called tabby), through twills and satins to complex computer-generated interlacings.
Both warp and weft can be visible in the final product. By spacing the warp more closely, it can completely cover the weft that binds it, giving a warpfaced textile such as rep weave. Conversely, if the warp is spread out, the weft can slide down and completely cover the warp, giving a weftfaced textile, such as a tapestry or a Kilim rug. There are a variety of loom styles for hand weaving and tapestry. In tapestry, the image is created by placing weft only in certain warp areas, rather than across the entire warp width.
[edit] History
There are some indications that weaving was already known in the Palaeolithic. An indistinct textile impression has been found at Pavlov, Moravia. Neolithic textiles are well known from finds in pile dwellings in Switzerland. They are made of flax or tree bast, wool has only been attested since the Bronze Age. Plain weaves and tabbies predominate.
Enslaved women worked as weavers during the Sumerian Era. They would wash wool fibers in hot water and wood-ash soap and then dry them. Next, they would beat out the dirt and card the wool. The wool was then graded, bleached, and spun into a thread. The spinners would pull out fibers and twist them together. This was done by either rolling fibers between palms or using a hooked stick. The thread was then placed on a wooden or bone spindle and rotated on a clay whorl which operated like a flywheel.
The slaves would then work in three-woman teams on looms, where they stretched the threads, after which they passed threads over and under each other at perpendicular angles. The cloth was then taken to a fuller.
Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897) points to numerous Biblical references to weaving in ancient times:
- Weaving was an art practised in very early times (Ex. 35:35). The Egyptians were specially skilled in it (Isa. 19:9; Ezek. 27:7), and some have regarded them as its inventors.
- In the wilderness, the Hebrews practised it (Ex. 26:1, 8; 28:4, 39; Lev. 13:47). It is referred to in subsequent times as specially the women's work (2 Kings 23:7; Prov. 31:13, 24). No mention of the loom is found in Scripture, but we read of the "shuttle" (Job 7:6), "the pin" of the beam (Judg. 16:14), "the web" (13, 14), and "the beam" (1 Sam. 17:7; 2 Sam. 21:19). The rendering, "with pining sickness," in Isa. 38:12 (A.V.) should be, as in the Revised Version, "from the loom," or, as in the margin, "from the thrum." We read also of the "warp" and "woof" (Lev. 13:48, 49, 51-53, 58, 59), but the Revised Version margin has, instead of "warp," "woven or knitted stuff."
The mechanization of weaving leading to an industry-scale operation took place in the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Numerous innovations took place taking the home-based artisan's activity from a labour intensive, man-powered undertaking to mass-production under the power of steam.
[edit] Weaving in Colonial America
Weaving was not allowed by the British in Colonial America. Colonists were supposed to send unfinished goods like cotton and flax to Britain and buy finished cloth back from England. Nonetheless, many people wove cloth in Colonial America.
In Colonial times the colonists mostly used cotton and flax for weaving because the English would not send them sheep or wool. They could get one cotton crop each fall. Flax was harvested in the summer.
In preparing wool for weaving, colonists would first shear the sheep with spring back clippers. This was done while keeping the sheep's feet from touching anything so it would not try to break free. They would try to cut the wool off the sheep in one big chunk because that way they would get long fibers. Sheep-shearing was done in the spring so that the fleece would regrow in time for the winter.
After shearing, wool would be washed in hot water to get out the dirt and grease (lanolin), then carded, at which point it would be ready for spinning into yarn. Washing the wool was a delicate procedure, because they didn't want to agitate the fibres too much in the process, and end up with felt. If the wool was clean enough (little to no vegetable matter), they could wait until after it is spun to clean out the lanolin, at which point it is easier to clean because it is yarn.
A card is a set of two brushes stroked one on the other with the fibre in the middle. This process of carding loosen and fluffs the fibre, as opposed to combing, which lines up all the fibres in the same direction, making the wool or cotton ready for spinning.
Cotton was harvested from little stalks. The cotton boll is white, roughly spherical and fluffy. Its seeds had to be removed before carding, a difficult and time-consuming process. (Later, a "cotton gin" was invented which took a lot of the work out of seed removal.) After carding it would be ready for spinning.
Linen is made from flax fibre. After growing the flax, workers had to ret it. To prepare flax for weaving, the stalks would be "braked", meaning beaten, with a tool that looks like a paper cutter but instead of having a big knife it has a blunt arm, then a scutching tool (a blunt wooden knife) is used to scrape away pieces of the stalk, and then the fibre is pulled through a heckling comb to get it ready for spinning. A heckling comb is like a brush with metal bristles that you pull flax stalks through.
After they spun the yarn, it would be dyed with berries, bark, flowers, herbs or weeds, often gathered by children.
With the yarn made, they would prepare the loom. The strings on a loom run in two directions. The yarn that is attached to the loom is called the warp, and the woof or weft is woven through it. The woof is wrapped around the shuttle, and woven alternately over and under the warp strings.
A plain weave was what most people liked in Colonial times. Almost everything was plain woven then. Sometimes designs were woven into the fabric but mostly designs were added after weaving. The colonists would usually add designs by using either wood block prints or embroidering.
[edit] Weaving in America, 1800-1900
The Jacquard loom attachment was perfected in 1801, and was becoming common in Europe by 1806. It came to the US in the early 1820's, some immigrant weavers bringing jacquard equipment with them, and spread west from New England. At first it was used with traditional human-powered looms. As a practical matter, previous looms were mostly limited to the production of simple geometric patterns. The jacquard allowed individual control of each warp thread, row by row without repeating, so very complex patterns were suddenly feasible. Jacquard woven coverlets (bedspreads) became popular by mid-century, in some cases being custom-woven with the name of the customer embedded in the programmed pattern. Undyed cotton warp was usually combined with dyed wool weft.
Natural dyes were used until just before the Civil War, when artificial dyes started to come into use.
For further information, please refer to:
- Coverlets Special Exhibit
- Rhode Island Coverlet Weavers
- Illinois Jacquard Coverlets and Weavers
- ILLINOIS JACQUARD COVERLETS AND WEAVERS: END OF A LEGACY
[edit] Weaving in Amazonia
Aguaje palm-bast (Mauritia flexuosa, Mauritia minor, or swamp palm) and the frond spears of the Chambira palm (Astrocaryum chambira, A.munbaca, A.tucuma, also known as Cumare or Tucum) have been used for centuries by the Urarina of the Peruvian Amazon to make cordage, net-bags hammocks, and to weave fabric (Dean, Bartholomew. "Multiple Regimes of Value: Unequal Exchange and the Circulation of Urarina Palm-Fiber Wealth" Museum Anthropology February 1994, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 3-20 available online)(paid subscription).
[edit] See also
- Jacquard weaving
- Textile manufacturing terminology
- Weaving (mythology)
- Persian weave
- Knitting
- Basket weaving
- Kasuri
- Friendship bracelet
