The process of making cotton or silk fabric starts from weaving or knitting yarn into the thread to produce the fabric. Traditionally, the yarn was woven with hand on wooden shuttles by moving shuttles horizontally backward and forward. Along with weaving, knitting and crochet are also used for making fabric out of raw material by joining the fibers together. These are time taking processes as they involve more human effort with less output. Nowadays, computerized machines have replaced wooden shuttles and loom to produce fabric efficiently. The fabric is usually produced in three basic steps. This study presents a brief description of how is cotton made into fabric step by step.
-
Spinning
In the very initial phase, the raw material like cotton is harvested from fields, or silk is taken out from the silkworm shell, then this material is cleaned from impurities. After that, the yarn is produced from this raw material. The fiber is produced with the help of spinning machines that use spinning wheels to spin the fiber. The fiber is spread around the wheel which is collected on the bobbins later on. Bobbins are cylindrical objects that hold the fiber after it has spun. This fiber is shifted to yarn or thread by joining fibers into long chains.
-
Weaving
After the raw material has been spun into yarn, the bobbins are shifted to the next phase of producing the fabric that is called weaving. Here the thread is connected together in certain patterns to form the fabric by weaving the threads in that particular pattern. Loom is used to weave the thread into the fabric which uses two sets of thread or yarn together to shape it into the desired pattern. These two threads are used assets, the first is the warp set which is tightly held across the metal frame and the second set is the weft that is used on the metal rods one by one. The loom then processes the threads into the fabric with the help of computerized instructions.
-
Processing
The final step is called processing where the fabric is fully shaped into final form. The fabric produced at the loom is called greige. The greige is in white color with no design, color, or embroidery on it. It is taken off from the loom and bleached to remove stains and additional colors. Further, it is washed with different chemicals and fabric cleaners to remove other impurities, wax, oils, and seed shells to make it fully clean for final processing. Finally, it is cut, dyed, and shaped in desired fabric to make it ready to be used in the home textile or the apparel industry.
As the manufacturing process involves some critical steps, quality is the major point to look for during production. Asia Textile Inspections is one of the leading fabric inspection service providers around the globe. Get in touch with Asia Textile Inspections and test the limits of the quality during the manufacturing process.