Textiles and Clothing by Kate Heintz Watson (good books for 7th graders txt) đź“•
[Illustration: FLY SHUTTLE HAND LOOM.
The Pulling of the Reed Automatically Throws the Shuttle Back and Forth and Works the Harness, Making a Shed at the Proper Time.]
[Sidenote: Primitive Fabrics]
No textiles of primitive people were ever woven in "pieces" or "bolts" of yards and yards in length to be cut into garments. The cloth was made of the size and shape to serve the particular purpose for which it was designed. The mat, robe, or blanket had tribal outlines and proportions and was made according to the materials and the use of common forms that prevailed among the tribes. The designs were alway
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Great improvement has been made in the manufacture of wash silks. They are fine in color and have a glossy surface. Pongee is a beautiful, durable silk in different shades of natural color. It is woven in different widths. This silk is especially valuable for underwear. The first cost is greater, but it outwears muslin or linen. It is also used for children's garments and for outside wraps. For many purposes, no better textile can be found.
Crepe de Chine is an incomparable textile possessing as much softness as strength. It is always supple, never creases, launders well, and comes in the most beautiful soft shades as well as in black and dark colors.
Satin is distinguished by its glossy, lustrous surface, obtained in the weaving.
Piled fabrics are rich, thick materials made of silk, wool, mohair, and cotton, comprising the velvets, velveteens, plushes, corduroys, and wilton and velvet carpets. The soft, raised pile is first woven in loops—Brussels carpet is a good example—and the loops are cut. The back of the goods is plain.
Velvet has always and justly been regarded as the most beautiful of textiles. No matter how fashions change in regard to other materials, velvet never loses its vogue. For robes and cloaks, for mantles and jackets, for hats and bonnets, for trimming and decoration, velvet has been popular for a greater period than the life of any living mortal, but never before has it been so cheap, so varied and so beautiful as it is now. One can in the passing throng of pedestrians on any crowded street see the use and abuse of this noble material. There is scarcely an article of dress into whose composition it does not enter and it is worn upon all occasions. Many things have brought about this result. The tendency of fashion is towards the decorative and picturesque and in these qualities velvet excels all other fabrics. Silk waste and thread are cheaper than ever before so that velvet costs much less than formerly. The men behind the looms have evolved more designs and novelties in the making of velvet than has ever been known and colors beautiful in themselves are seemingly enhanced when applied to velvet.
All that has been said in favor of velvet applies equally as well to the best velveteen,—in fact it is a textile of even greater value and beauty than velvet. The best grades are not cheap, but they wear better than silk velvet, are fine and silky, excellent in color and sheen, launder well, and do not press-mark as does silk velvet. Velveteen takes the dye so beautifully and finishes so well that it has taken rank with our best standard fabrics. It is made entirely of cotton. It varies in width but is always wider than velvet.
A knowledge of the various widths of textiles is important in buying. Transparent fabrics are usually wider than heavier goods made of the same fiber. Muslin is wider than calico or ordinary print, and thin silk fabrics such as mull and chiffon are wider than velvet.
In wool dress goods various distinct widths are known as single—thirty and thirty-six inches—double fold (forty-five and fifty-four inches), etc. Silk, velvet, and velveteen are single width. The velvet ranges from eighteen to twenty-four inches in width and velveteen twenty-seven. Bodice linings vary from thirty-five to thirty-eight inches; skirt linings come in both single and double fold.
Household linen including bedding varies in width from one yard to two and one-fourth and two and one-half yards for sheeting and from thirty-eight to fifty-four inches for pillow case muslin.
Table linen is woven in both square and circular cloths of various sizes, and napkins vary in width from the small sizes to a yard square.
No fixed widths can be given for any textile as width often changes with the weave.
NAMES OF FABRICSTextiles usually take their names from the country, city, port, or province from whence they originated; from the names of the makers; and methods of weaving, dyeing, ornamentation, etc. The fixing of localities, methods, etc., is oftentimes guesswork. The textiles of to-day bearing the same name as those of the middle ages have nothing in common. Buckram was originally made in and called from Bokkara. In the middle ages it was costly, fine, and beautiful, used for church vestments, veils for covering lecterns, cathedral flags, and in the 16th century for the lining of velvet gowns. The coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material known as buckram today is used for stiffening, etc.
Fustian, a kind of corduroy or velveteen, was originally woven at Fustat on the Nile. The warp was stout linen, the woof of cotton so twilled and cut that it gave a low thick pile. Chaucer's knight in the fourteenth century wore fustian. In the fifteenth century Naples was famous for the weaving of fustians.
A cloth made in France at a town called Mustrevilliers was known as "mustyrd devells."
China is supposed to be the first country to weave patterned silks. India, Persia, Syria, and Byzantine Greece followed. Those were known as "diaspron" or diaper, a name given them at Constantinople. In the twelfth century, the city of Damascus, long famed for her beautiful textiles, outstripped all other places for beauty of design and gave the Damascen or damask, so we have in modern times all fabrics whether of silk, cotton, wool, or linen, curiously woven and designed, known as damask, and diaper, which means pattern, is almost forgotten, or only a part of the elaborate design on damask. Bandekin, a costly cloth, took its name from Bagdad. Dorneck an inferior damask woven of silk, wool, linen, thread and gold, was made in Flanders at the city of Dorneck.
From the Asiatic city Mosul came the muslin used then as it is now throughout the world. So skilled were its weavers that the threads were of hair-like fineness. This was known as the invisible muslin, the weaving of which has become a lost art. To this beautiful cloth were given many fanciful and poetic names. It was woven with strips of gold and silver.
Calico derives its name from the city of Calicut in India. The city is scarcely known to-day; it was the first Indian city visited by Europeans.
In the thirteenth century Arras was famous for its areste or tapestry, "the noblest of the weaving arts"; in it there is nothing mechanical. Mechanical weaving repeats the pattern on the cloth within comparatively narrow limits and the number of colors is in most cases limited to four or five.
Silks and cottons are distinguished through their colors and shades. Tarsus was a purple silk. Other cities gave their name to various shades, according as they were dyed at Antioch, Alexandria, or at Naples. Watered or moire silk takes its name from the finish.
From "canabis," the Latin name for hemp or flax, we have the word "canvas" to mean any texture woven of hempen thread.
To this list of fabrics might be added many others of cotton, linen, wool, and silk with new names, closely resembling the old materials, having greater or less merit.
The following lists of fabrics and terms may be helpful for reference:
Art linen—With round, hard twisted threads.
"Albert cloth"—Named for England's prince, is a reversible all-wool material each side of different colors and so finished that no lining is required. It is used chiefly for overcoats and better known as "golf cloth," "plaid back," etc.
Armure—A cloth woven in miniature imitation of feudal metal armor plates, heraldic devices, diamonds, birdseye, and seeded effects.
Astrakhan—A woolen or silk material with a long and closely curled pile in imitation of the fur from which it is named.
Backed-cloth worsteds or other fabrics which are woven with an extra layer of warp or other filling underneath the face, usually for increased weight and bulk.
Batiste—The French word for lawn, fine white cotton or linen fabric. Sometimes printed.
Batting or padding, cotton or wool prepared in sheets for quilting or interlining.
Beaver—Similar to Kersey, but with a longer nap, soft, thick nap inside.
Bedford cord—A closely woven woolen or cotton cloth having a raised corded surface similar to pique, used for women's suits.
Bonde—A loosely woven fabric with a curly, hairy surface, usually made with a jersey or stockinet body.
Bourette—An effect of weaving produced by fancy yarns showing in lumps at intervals over the face of the cloth; used for women's and children's suits.
Beverteen—A heavy cotton cloth used for men's hunting garments.
Broadcloth—A fine woolen cloth with a glossy finished surface, the better grades being woven with a twilled back. It takes its name from its width. It is used for men's and women's wear.
Buckram—A coarse, heavy, plain-woven linen or cotton material used for stiffening.
Buckskin—A stout doe skin with a more defined twill.
Butternut—The coarse brown twilled homespun cloth woven of wool prior to the Civil War—colored brown with dye from the butternut or walnut tree; used for men's wear and for decorative purposes.
Cambric—Fine white linen, also made in cotton in imitation.
Camel's hair—A beautiful, soft, silky fabric, usually woven like cheviot of hair of camel and goat.
Canvas—A linen, cotton, silk, or wool cloth of different weaves and widths, used for many purposes—clothing, as a background for embroidery, hangings, spreads, etc.
Canton flannel—A stout, twilled cotton cloth with a nap on one or both sides, used for clothing and decorative purposes.
Cassimere—A general term for all-wool fabrics woven either plain or twilled, coarse or fine, of woolen yarn. The pattern is always woven plain and distinct and the cloth is never napped.
Castor Beaver—A heavy, milled, face-finished, all-wool cloth lighter in weight than ordinary beaver.
Chinchilla—A thick, heavy, double woven fabric with a long napped surface curled up into little tufs in imitation of chinchilla fur; used for coats.
Clan Tartan—The plaids of the various highland clans of Scotland.
Clay—A name given to serges, worsteds, and diagonals woven after a process of J. & P. Clay of Haddersfield, England.
Coating—Those woolen and worsted fabrics most especially adapted to men's dress and overcoats.
Corduroy—A thick cotton pile material, corded or ribbed on the surface; used for men's, women's and children's wear.
Corkscrew-worsted goods—So-called from its fancied resemblance to the twists of the corkscrew.
Cotton worsted—All cotton or part cotton worsted-wove cloth.
Cottonade—Stout cotton cloth in imitation of woolen or worsted; used for men's trousers.
Covert—A twill-woven cloth sometimes with full face, sometimes sheared to imitate whipcord.
Crape cloth—A stout worsted fabric with surface in imitation of silk crape, used for dress coats.
Crash—A strong, course linen cloth of different widths, used for towels, suits, table linen, hangings, bed spreads; in fact, there is no end to the uses to which this textile can be adapted.
Cravenette—Cloths treated and finished before weaving by an improved process which renders them rainproof. A secret process owned by the Cravenette Company and by Priestly & Company of England and the United States.
Crepe—A light weight silk, silk and wool, or all wool or cotton cloth of irregular weave.
Diagonal—A worsted cloth with prominent diagonal ridges.
Doeskin—A compact twilled woolen, soft and pliable.
Drap D'Alma—A fine, close, flat-ribbed, twilled fabric of wool or silk and wool, finished on but one side.
Drap D'Ete—A fine, light worsted fabric woven in longitudinal cords.
Drilling—General term for various cotton stuffs used for lining men's wear, and general purposes.
Empress cloth—A heavy dress goods with napped or corded surface, named for the Empress Eugenia; sometimes called Electrol cloth or Beretz.
Etamine—A light woolen cloth similar to batiste and nun's cloth, used for women's and children's wear.
Faille Francaise—A soft, lustrous silk of wider cord than grosgrain, but narrower than ottoman.
Farmer Satin—A lining of cotton chain or warp and wool filling, finished with a high lustre, also called Italian cloth.
Flannel—A
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