Migration

Part 5 - Spinning and Weaving

The human body louse, which lives only in clothing, may have diverged from the head louse about 170,000 years ago, suggesting that humans began wearing clothing at around this time.

Archaeologists have discovered textiles of dyed flax made 36,000 year ago and, at a site in Faiyum, Egypt, a fragment of cloth was found with about 12 threads by 9 threads per centimetre in a plain weave dated about 5000 BCE.

Surviving samples of knitting date from 6500 BCE (knitting did not require a loom, which made it a valuable technique for nomadic herders).

In China, woven bamboo ropes, boxes, baskets, bowls and mats and curtains have been used since 5000 BCE while the earliest evidence of silk production is dated between 5000 and 3000 BCE and clothing of the elite was made of silk in vivid primary colours from about 1000 BCE.

About 114 BCE the Silk Road trade route opened between Chang'an (modern Xi'an in central China) and the Mediterranean, permitted the export of luxury textiles and many other Chinese products like paper and printing. The Silk Road trade was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and Rome.

Until silk was rediscovered and cotton was introduced via Sicily and Spain in the 9th century, the main fibres used in Medieval Europe were linen and nettlecloth but other vegetable and animal fibres were used, including hair, wool, linen (from flax/linseed), cotton, silk, hemp and ramie.

Making fabric by hand was a labour-intensive process involving fibre making, spinning, and weaving. The fibres of flax plants, for example, had to be separated from the stems by soaking and pounding before they could be twisted (or spun) together to make thread.

Spinning was devised, in pre-historic times, to make thread and yarn. Plant or animal fibres were twisting together to make rope, fish nets or sewing thread but later thread was used to make knitted fabrics and woven cloth.

The strength of a thread depended on the length of the fibre and the degree of twist. Shorter fibres or hairs were often mixed with longer fibres, or given more twist than longer fibres, to make the thread stronger. When two or more spun yarns were twisted together to form a thicker yarn, the single threads were always spun in one direction and when two or more threads were spun together they were always spun in the opposite direction. This ensured that the yarn would not untwist.

The weaving of silk from silkworm cocoons began in China about 3500 BCE. Silk worms spun their cocoons in one long strand and this was unwound by placing the cocoons in boiling water to loosen the silk strands and kill the silk worm pupae. The ends from several cocoons were then picked up by hand and twisted (spun) together to form a silk thread.

Except for silk, the earliest spinning method was to roll tufts of animal hair or plant fibre down the thigh with the hand, adding tufts until the thread was long enough. This slow process was improved by attaching a small stone to the end and spinning the stone as the tufts were added.

Later, a spinner (or spinster) held a bunch of wool or plant fibres in the left hand while the right hand held a spindle, a straight stick eight to twelve inches long. Fibres were drawn out and fastened to a slit or hook on the top of the spindle. The spindle was then rolled along a thigh to spin the yarn. The yarn was wound around the spindles as it became longer.

The bunch of wool, or other fibres, was later wrapped around one end of a distaff (short stick) that was held under the left arm or tucked into a belt, freeing the left hand to pull tufts from the bunch.

The process was further improved by a weight, called a spindle whorl, attached to the bottom of the spindle, that kept the spindle steady and made rotation easier.

The spinning wheel was probably invented in the Islamic world before 1030 but the earliest record is an illustration from Baghdad in 1237 CE. The invention reached China by 1090 and Europe and India by the 13th century.

The spinning wheel simply twisted the yarn more quickly than the hand rolling process permitting better control of the twist and tension. The yarn was wound on a horizontally spindle that was spun at high speed by a cord wound around the periphery of a large, hand-driven wheel (an early example of gearing).

The spinner held the fibres in the left hand and turned the wheel with the right hand or a foot. The fibre was twisted by holding it at a slight angle to the spindle and the spun yarn was then wound onto the spindle.

By medieval times, the wheel had become larger so that the spindle (whorl or sheave) turned even faster, an advantage when spinning wool or cotton.

A loom is used to hold warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The weft thread is typically carried on a shuttle and unspooled as the shuttle travelled across the cloth between the warp threads when they are raised and lowered.

A handloom is a simple machine where alternate warp threads pass through a heddle, a ring attached to a lever so that half of the warp thread can be raised or lowered. This provides the space for the shuttle (carrying the weft thread) to pass between the warp threads.

In a warp-weighted (vertical) loom the warp threads are attached to an over head bar and kept in tension by a second bar near floor level. Warp threads can be unwound from one bar and wound up on the other to make longer pieces. It was probably invented before 6000 BCE and spread throughout Europe from Greece.

The earliest evidence of a horizontal loom was found on a pottery dish in ancient Egypt, dated to 4400 BCE. It was a frame loom, equipped with foot pedals to lift the warp threads, leaving the weaver's hands free to pass the weft thread and beat the weft thread tightly into place.

The earliest confirmed draw loom fabrics are from China about 400 BCE but weavers were using foot-powered multi-harness looms and jacquard looms for silk weaving and embroidery about 300 years later during the Han dynasty (206 BCE to 220 CE). (Brocade is a fabric where the patterns are woven into the cloth usually producing a low relief effect. A drawloom is a hand-loom for weaving patterned cloth where a "figure harness" is used to control each warp thread separately. It requires a weaver and an assistant to manage the figure harness).

The back strap loom is a simple hand loom where the warps threads are stretched between two sticks one of which is attached to a fixed object and the other to the weaver (who tensions the warp threads by leaning back into a back strap.

To make cloth wider than their arm-span, weavers needed an assistant to send the shutter back.