From traditional animal skins to high-tech synthetics, there are hundreds of types of fabrics available today. Almost all of our fabrics are made of fibers, including those used to make sheets, towels, curtains, and rugs. Fibers are thin threads. The hairs on your head are fibers. Like human hair, the fibers used to make fabric can be straight or curly, smooth or coarse. Most fibers can be lumped into two categories—natural and synthetic. Most natural fibers are the direct product of agriculture, while synthetic fibers are made by people.
Fiber is a word often used to describe something that should be in our diet. Many people think that farmers involved in the production of food and fiber are producing the things we need to eat. Fiber is in our food, but when farmers and other agriculturists use the term, they are talking about the fiber used to make our clothes. Fiber is the raw material that is long, strong, and pliable enough to be spun into yarns and woven into fabrics. The characteristics of fabric are determined by the type of fiber used and the weave or the knitting technique used. The same weave made using a different fiber will create a different type of fabric. Nature provides many different kinds of fibers that can be made into cloth. All the fibers gathered from plants and animals are called natural fibers. They have served people for centuries.
Natural Fibers
A variety of animals provide natural fibers. Wool comes from sheep. Llamas and their relatives, alpacas, guanacos, and vicuñas also provide a fiber called wool. Angora rabbits provide angora fiber and Angora goats provide mohair. Cashmere comes from Kashmir goats. The large white moth caterpillar, commonly called the silkworm, provides the finest silk. The fur and skins from animals such as mink, beaver, muskrats, and rabbits can also be found in clothing. Although leather is not a fiber, it is widely used as a fabric. Cattle hides are the source of most leathers, but the hides of pigs are also extensively used in soft leather goods.
Plants provide us natural fibers for fabric as well. The world’s most important non-food crop is cotton. So many things are made of cotton that it would be hard to go through a day without using or wearing cotton cloth. Cotton has been found in tombs in India dating back to 3,000 BC. Linen, one of the world’s oldest fabrics, is made from the fiber of the flax plant. Lesser-known natural fibers such as ramie, jute, and hemp have many uses, varying from finely woven fabrics to rope.
Synthetic Fibers
Since the late 1800s people have had synthetic fiber options to choose from. These fibers are made by chemists, and they fall into two broad groups depending on their source. One group of fabrics is made from natural materials, such as cellulose, which are chemically converted into compounds that can be made into fiber. Most cellulose used for making synthetic fiber comes from softwoods or the short fibers sticking to cottonseeds. Rayon and acetate are cellulose-based fabrics.
The second group of synthetic fibers is formed solely from chemical compounds, most of which are by-products of the oil-refining process. These fibers can be woven into cloth and are often mixed with natural fibers. They are resilient, although some are easily damaged by high temperatures. Petroleum-based fabrics include Kevlar®, nylon, polyester, acrylic, polypropylene, olefin, and spandex.
Fibers and Natural Resources
All fibers, whether natural or synthetic, have one thing in common. All are made from natural resources. Some natural resources are renewable because they are replenished by natural cycles. Fibers from trees, plants, and animals come from renewable natural resources. Even the synthetic fiber rayon is made from a renewable resource—the plant product cellulose. But not all natural resources can be regenerated or replaced naturally within a reasonable amount of time. It would take millions of years to replenish our oil and petroleum reserves—not a reasonable amount of time. Polyester, orlon, nylon, polypropylene, and spandex are made from oil and petroleum—nonrenewable resources.
Textile Processing and Careers
It takes many steps and jobs to change fiber into a fabric that can be used to make clothing. Wool, for example, is first sheared from sheep. Then it is sorted by type and quality before it goes to a mill. In the mill, the wool is cleaned to remove dirt and grease. When the wool is clean, it can be dyed if desired. It is then carded to remove tangles and any remaining dirt. Carding turns the wool into long, soft strands that are then spun into yarn. Wool yarn is woven on looms or knitted into fabric. For wool or any fabric to be made into clothing, the fabric is sold to a clothes manufacturer. Clothing is designed and patterns are developed before the fabric is cut. The fabric is cut according to the pattern, sewn into a garment, and sold to stores. Finally, you, the consumer, buy the garment at the store—often after seeing some advertising. This process and the many careers involved make up the textile industry.
Jobs involved in producing and preparing clothing for the consumer may include agricultural producers (farmers and ranchers), plant and animal scientists, veterinarians, shearers, wool buyers, sorters, classers, carders, spinners, dyers, weavers, knitters, fabric designers, fabric buyers, clothes designers, pattern makers, seamstresses and tailors, advertising writers and artists, models and photographers, truckers, salesclerks, and more. There’s no question that the journey from resources to you involves many jobs, businesses, and industries all over the world.
Cotton
Cotton grows best where it stays warm and sunny for at least half of the year. Large amounts are grown in the southern United States, China, and India. In the United States, cotton farmers plant cotton in the late spring. They use mechanical planters that can plant seed in as many as eight rows at a time. During the growing season, scouts go out into the fields to count harmful insects. If there are too many, the farmer will use pesticides to control them.
About two months after planting, flower buds (called squares) appear on the plant. Three weeks later the blossoms open. The petals change colors as they mature. First they are creamy white. Then they turn yellow, then pink, and finally, dark red. After three days the red flowers wither and fall, leaving green pods called cotton bolls.
The boll is shaped like a tiny football. Moist fibers grow and push out from the newly formed seeds. As the boll ripens, it turns brown. The fibers continue to expand in the warm sun. Finally they split the boll apart, and the fluffy cotton bursts out. Cotton is harvested in the fall. Most cotton is harvested by machine. After the cotton is harvested, it is stored at the edge of the field in big mounds or loaded on trailers or trucks and carried to the cotton gin. At the cotton gin powerful pipes suck the cotton into the building and through cleaning machines that remove burs and leaf trash. Then circular saws with small, sharp teeth pull the fiber from the seed. The ginned fiber is called lint. The lint is pressed into 480-pound bales that are about the size of a large refrigerator.
The bales are sold to cotton merchants who sell them to textile mills in the United States or in foreign countries. At the textile mills, huge machines spin the cotton fibers into cotton thread. The thread is then woven into cloth on looms. The rolls of cloth that come off the looms are called bolts. Clothing manufacturers buy bolts of cloth and cut jeans, shirts, dresses, and other items of clothing from them to sew.
Wool
Wool cloth is woven from yarn that is spun from the fibers grown as the thick fleece of sheep. Sheep wool comes in shades of black, white, and brown. There are several hundred breeds of sheep. (Generally, only hand spinners keep and raise colored sheep. Commercial wool producers discriminate against all but white sheep. Only white wool can be dyed.) Once a year, sheep have their fleeces cut off, or sheared. An experienced shearer can shear a sheep in 1–4 minutes. Wool is like hair in that it grows back.
After the wool of a sheep has been cut, or sheared, it is sent to the factory where it is washed, dyed, carded (brushed), and spun into yarn. Then it is ready to knit, crochet, or weave into a blanket, a rug, a sweater, a pair of socks, or something else. People who weave cloth set up the warp threads first. The warp threads are the threads that go up and down. The weft threads are woven side to side through the warp threads. This action locks the threads together. Today, most weaving is done in factories by machines. The machines are faster than the old-fashioned wooden looms, and the patterns they create are more uniform.
