Woven fabric

A Palaung woman weaving a vibrant fabric on a lap loom.

Woven fabric is any textile formed by weaving. Woven fabrics, often created on a loom, are made of many threads woven in a warp and weft. Technically, a woven fabric is any fabric made by interlacing two or more threads at right angles to one another. Woven fabrics can be made of natural fibers, synthetic fibers, or a mixture of both, such as cotton and polyester. Woven fabrics are used for clothing, garments, decorations, furniture, carpets and other uses.

Production process

Yarn preparation

Fibers are spun into yarns and prepared with specific properties tailored for either the warp (longitudinal yarns) or the weft (transverse yarns).

A graphic with Arabic text distinguishing raw fibers from processed threads and woven fabric.

Warping

The warp yarns are arranged on a beam to prepare for weaving. The warp threads are held taut and parallel, and as such must be strong and durable.

Weaving

During weaving, the weft yarn passes over and under the warp yarns in various patterns. The primary types of weaves are plain weave, twill weave, and satin weave. These basic types have been extrapolated into a variety of diverse patterns that serve both form and function.

Finishing

After weaving, the fabric undergoes several finishing processes, which might include bleaching, dyeing, printing, and treatments to enhance performance characteristics like water resistance or shrinkage prevention.

Qualities

Woven fabrics only stretch diagonally on the bias (between the warp and weft directions), unless the threads used are elastic. Woven fabric cloth usually frays at the edges, unless techniques are used to counter it, such as the use of pinking shears or hemming. Different companies use textiles differently to create products.

Plain weave

Fabrics that are woven do not stretch as easily as knitted fabrics, which can make them advantageous for many uses.

Closely woven fabric is more durable and keeps it shape better. Woven fabric is constructed with two threads, horizontal and vertical. The horizontal threads are called the weft and the vertical threads are called the warp. The warp and weft can be woven together in different variations of the three basic weaves; plain, twill and satin. These varieties can be shaped into dresses, tops, coats, etc.

Evidence of Woven Fabric in Prehistoric Era

Beginning in the stone ages, it was suggested that any materials accessible to humans at the time was used to make woven cloth. This included wool hem, skin, flax fibers from trees or intestines of animals to make fabrics. For thousands of years civilization depended on whatever they could find. Woven fabric was the thread between our ancient instincts and the structured lives we live today. Researcher and historian Perry Walton writes, “It is fair to conjecture that thousands of years before the dawn of civilization some savage matron, sitting in front of the cave or rude hut which sheltered her, wove the original basket from the rushes of a brook that perchance may have gurgled at her feet, or may have cut strips of skin from the animal her lord and master had slain, and plaited them into the original fabric that was the beginning of textiles,” (Walton 16). Suggesting that woven began with baskets and later turned into a fabric as humans progressed. These extreme processes would shape the norms we have today.

Woven Fabric Around the World

Woven fabric began to make its mark around the world. Beginning in Persia the first shawls and carpets were woven. In 2640 B.C. silk weaving became the norm in China. Egyptian Mummies were found in woven Nile linen cloth. In the Bible there were numerous references to woven fabric and scriptures mentioning garments created from woven fabric. Ancient Mexicans and Peruvians would create the most skillful woven cloth. People began to crave fabrics that were rich in color and got creative. “Some of the American Indians wove fabrics of a high order. Blankets made by the Navajos of Arizona and New Mexico are of so close a texture they will hold water, and in design and brilliancy of color are most striking, although woven in a primitive manner, by hand. The beautiful white “Tappa” cloth of the South Sea Islands was made in a peculiar way, especially by the natives of the Marquesas Islands. Instead of being woven, it was beaten together. The exterior green bark was stripped from the branches of the so-called “cloth” tree, a species of the mulberry, which grows luxuriantly in those regions, and the remaining fibrous substance was then removed from the stick to which it had adhered,” (Walton 23). Color was discovered was easy to create, and so it became a need not a want. Despite differences in materials people were provided with, nevertheless a clothing and color emerged out of these communities

First Improvements in the Process

The first step in the right direction to making woven fabric easier is a spindle and a distaff. The first recorded example of the distaff was in England. The distaff was created by Anthony Bonvoise around the time of Henry VIII’s reign. It led to the creation of Coxal cloths. On the other hand there were records of items similar to the spindle and distaff. It was said there were stone records from Solomom, Homer and Herdotus alluding to the two items. The spindle includes a round stick of wood and then at the end has a notch for the yarn to catch. The distaff is where the material is spun around upon a longer stick. The two would twist loose fibers into yarn but in a completely different and more complex manner. In the 14th century in Europe a wheel was mounted and placed on top of the frame to make it easier. It was thought that it would make the process easier as a woman could place a seat by the wheel. The idea came to be in 1533 by a citizen from Brunswick. Slowly the new and improved invention spread across England and every woman could easily make her own woven fabric.

Woven Fabric in a Factory System

The thing that pushed for the fastest spread of woven fabric was factories. One of the first official factories was a business known as “Jack of Newbury”. The owner, John Winchcombe, would create clothes for Henry VIII and his wife Catherine. Looms of fabric were created in his Newbury home, and so began the birth of Woven Fabric factories. Overtime factories would be altered forever changing the future of woven fabric. Perry Walton explains over time as it processed and became a factory business, “At first fabrics were a by-product of agriculture in England, for the farm homestead was the seat of the textile industry. The males of the household raised the flocks, while the females spun the yarn and wove the fabrics; and so the industry thrived and prospered for hundreds of years, giving occupation and income to thousands of the agricultural class. As time went on, the farmers of certain sections, particularly about Bury, Oldham, Preston, Man-chester, and Chester, became the more expert in the art, and soon the beginning of the factory system appeared in a separation of spinning from weaving, the two originally being done by one person. And little by little there came a further differentiation of work in the process not only of manufacturing, but also of merchandising the product, and this has left a trace in many English names,” (Walton 76). This marked the beginning of woven fabric becoming a product to be sold. In the 1700s the first official cotton mill was established and turned by horses to create the cotton spinning into woven fabric, but this was not practical. The demand for fabric called for a faster way for the household item to be developed in this monotonous line of work. And so an even better invention was born. Walton explains the way a spinning frame worked. “Water power was already beginning to supply the power to the few mills in existence, and in 1771 Arkwright erected a new mill at Cromford…was supplied with a cylinder card machine and a spinning frame, which could roll as well as spin, and which was called a water frame from the power that supplied it. The machines thus grouped at Cromford made it possible for the first time to accomplish the whole operation of cotton spinning in one mill, the first machine receiving the cotton wool as it came from the pod, and the last winding the cotton, twisted in firm hard yarn upon the bobbins,” (Walton 83-84). The spinning frame increased the amount of factories because it made the work of making the fabric easier.

How to choose fabric for dress

See also

• Knitted fabric
• Nonwoven fabric

References

3. Walton, Perry. "The Story of Textiles" Tudor Publishing Company, 1912.

External links

• Media related to Woven textiles at Wikimedia Commons