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Read it knowledge about Textile & Garments 

                                  

The term “textile” derived from the Latin textiles and the French texere, meaning “to weave,” and it originally referred only to woven fabrics. It has, however, come to include fabrics produced by other methods. Thus, threads, cords, ropes, braids, lace, 

embroidery, nets, and fabrics made by weaving, knitting, bonding, felting, or tufting are textiles. Some definitions of the term textile would also include those products obtained by the 
papermaking principle that have many of the properties associated with conventional fabrics. In addition to clothing and home furnishings, textiles are used for such industrial products as filters to air conditioners, life rafts, conveyor belts, tents, automobile tires, swimming pools, safety helmets and mine ventilators. 

• History of clothing and textiles

The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of most human societies. It is not known when humans began wearing clothes. Anthropologists believe that animal skins and vegetation were adapted into coverings as protection from cold, heat and rain, especially as humans migrated to new climates; alternatively, covering may have been invented first for other purposes, such as magic,decoration,cult, or prestige, and later found to be practical as well.

Clothing and textiles have been important in human history and reflects the materials available to a civilization as well as the technologies that it has mastered. The social significance of the finished product reflects their culture.

Textiles, defined as felt or spun fibers made into yarn and subsequently netted, looped, knit or woven to make fabrics, appeared in the Middle East during the late stone age.From ancient times to the present day, methods of textile production have continually evolved, and the choices of textiles available have influenced how people carried their possessions, clothed themselves, and decorated their surroundings.

Sources available for the study of the history of clothing and textiles include material remains discovered via archaeology; representation of textiles and their manufacture in art; and documents concerning the manufacture, acquisition, use, and trade of fabrics, tools, and finished garments. Scholarship of textile history, especially its earlier stages, is part of material culture studies. 

• Prehistoric development

Recent scientific research estimates that humans have been wearing clothing for as long as 190,000 years.

The development of textile and clothing manufacture in prehistory has been the subject of a number of scholarly studies since the late 20th century, including Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean, as well as Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. These sources have helped to provide a coherent history of these prehistoric developments. Evidence suggests that human beings may have begun wearing clothing as far back as 100,000 to 500,000 years ago.

Genetic analysis suggests that the human body louse, which lives in clothing, may have diverged from the head louse some 107,000 years ago, evidence that humans began wearing clothing at around this time.

Possible sewing needles have been dated to around 40,000 years ago. The earliest definite examples of needles originate from the Solute's culture, which existed in France from 19,000 BC to 15,000 BC. The earliest dyed flax fibers have been found in a prehistoric cave in the Republic of Georgia and date back to 36,000 BP.

The earliest evidence of weaving comes from impressions of textiles and basketry and nets on little pieces of hard clay, dating from 27,000 years ago and found in Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic.

At a slightly later date (25,000 years) the Venus figurines were depicted with clothing. Those from western Europe were adorned with basket hats or caps, belts worn at the waist, and a strap of cloth that wrapped around the body right above the breast. Eastern European figurines wore belts, hung low on the hips and sometimes string skirts.

Archaeologists have discovered artifacts from the same period that appear to have been used in the textile arts: (5000 BC) net gauges, spindle needles and weaving sticks.

• Ancient textiles and clothing 

The first actual textile, as opposed to skins sewn together, was probably felt. Surviving examples of Nålebinding, another early textile method, date from 6500 BC. Our knowledge of ancient textiles and clothing has expanded in the recent past thanks to modern technological developments. Our knowledge of cultures varies greatly with the climatic conditions to which archeological deposits are exposed; the Middle East and the arid fringes of China have provided many very early samples in good condition, but the early development of textiles in the Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa and other moist parts of the world remains unclear. In northern Eurasia peat bogs can also preserve textiles very well.

Early woven clothing was often made of full loom widths draped, tied, or pinned in place.

• Textiles - Making Textiles 

The major steps in the manufacture of clothes are four: first to harvest and clean the fiber or wool; second, to card it and spin it into threads; third, to weave the threads into cloth; and, finally to fashion and sew the cloth into clothes.

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.

Picking                  By Hand             By Machine

 # 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.

Carding           By Hand                    By Machine

 # 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.

   Spinning                By Hand               By Machine
 

 # 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."

   Warping                  By Hand       By Machine

 # 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.

   Weaving             By Hand              By Machine

 # 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.

• Industrial Revolution - Timeline of Textile Machinery

Several inventions in textile machinery occurred in a relatively short time period during the industrial revolution.

• 1733 Flying shuttle invented by John Kay - an improvement to looms that enabled weavers to weave faster.
• 1742 Cotton mills were first opened in England.
• 1764 Spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves - the first machine to improve upon the spinning wheel.
• 1764 Water frame invented by Richard Arkwright - the first powered textile machine.
• 1769Arkwright patented the water frame.
• 1770Hargreaves patented the Spinning Jenny.
• 1773The first all-cotton textiles were produced in factories.
• 1779 Crompton invented the spinning mule that allowed for greater control over the weaving process.

• The History of Fabric & Textiles

 

Textiles are defined as the yarns that are woven or knitted to make fabrics. The use of textiles links the myriad cultures of the world and defines the way they clothe themselves, adorn their surroundings and go about their lives. Textiles have been an integral part of human daily life for thousands of years, with the first use of textiles, most likely felt, dates back to the late Stone Age, roughly 100,000 years ago. However, the earliest instances of cotton, silk and linen being to appear around 5,000 BC in India, Egypt and China. The ancient methods of manufacturing textiles, namely plain weave, satin weave and twill, have changed very little over the centuries. Modern manufacturing speed and capacity, however, have increased the rate of production to levels unthinkable even 200 years ago.

Trade of textiles in the ancient world occurred predominantly on the Silk Road, a winding route across lower Asia that connected the Mediterranean lands with the Far East. Spanning over 5,000 miles and established during the Han Dynasty in China around 114 BC, the Silk Road was an integral part of the sharing of manufactured goods, cultures and philosophies, and helped develop the great civilizations of the world. During the Middle Ages, simple clothing was favored by the majority of people, while finer materials such as silks and linens were the trappings of royalty and the rich. During the 14th century, however, advances in dyeing and tailoring accelerated the spread of fashion throughout Western Europe, and drastically altered the mindset of both wealthy man and commoner alike. Clothing and draperies became increasingly elaborate over the next several centuries, although production methods remained largely unchanged until the invention of steam-powered mechanized facilities during the Industrial Revolution. From that point on, quality textiles became available to the masses at affordable prices.

Textiles can be derived from several sources: animals, plants and minerals are the traditional sources of materials, while petroleum-derived synthetic fibers were introduced in the mid-20th century. By far, animal textiles are the most prevalent in human society, and are commonly made from furs and hair. Silk, wool, and pashmina are all extremely popular animal textiles. Plant textiles, the most common beingcotton, can also be made from straw, grass and bamboo. Mineral textiles include glass fiber, metal fiber and asbestos. The recent introduction of synthetic textiles has greatly expanded the array of options available for fabric manufacturers, both in terms of garment versatility and usability. Polyester, spandex, nylon and acrylic are all widely used synthetic textiles.

In addition to the multitude of textiles available for use, there are many different methods for creating fabrics from textiles. Weaving is performed using a loom, typically a rectangular frame on which strands of fibers are hung and interlaced with other fibers. Knitting involves interlacing strands of yarn with the use of a needle, and is typically done by hand, while weaving is largely mechanized. Lacing is performed using a backing piece to create finer fabrics with open holes throughout the piece. Interlacing a yarn through an existing piece of woven cloth results in a layer known as a pile, which is prominent in the manufacture of carpets and velvet. Finally, and by far the oldest technique, is felting, which involves squeezing a mat of fibers together in a liquid to create a tangled, flat material.

Textiles can also be colored using a variety of techniques, including weaving together fibers of differing colors, bleaching to create a pure white look, stitching colored yarn through existing fabric, the use of resist dyeing, and many other ways of printing directly onto finished fabric. Modern dyeing methods can create fabrics of almost any color or pattern imaginable.

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