Cotton touches a variety of industries, such as feminine care, beauty, and quilting (just to name a few). “Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America”; Angela Lakwete; 2003, “Cotton's Renaissance: A Study in Market Innovation”; Timothy C. Jacobson, George David Smith; 2001. Non-organic cotton, on the other hand, uses hazardous chemicals that are associated with cancer, hormone defects and birth defects in animals and humans. Once cotton is harvested, very little of it goes to waste. © 2020 Barnhardt Natural Fibers. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. Forming Yarn. Looms weave cotton yarns into fabrics the same way the first hand-weaving frames did. First, any trash—such as grass or leaves—is removed from the bottom of the module. // Leaf Group Lifestyle. Luckily for farmers, new seed varieties, ones that mature earlier, are constantly being developed. The sliver is drawn out to a thinner strand and given a slight twist to improve strength, then wound on bobbins (spools wound with the thread-like product for storage). But the beauty of cotton is that most of what is harvested is used in some capacity.
Until harvest, it’s important for farmers to keep their fields as free as possible from weeds, insects, and disease. Other module feeders are self-propelled, moving down a track alongside the modules. Also, fibers must be removed from the seeds. Mexico was one of the first places where cotton cloth was used — dating back to 5,000 B.C. It continues to be one of the most popular fibres in the world today, as it is comfortable, durable and offers excellent value for money. This natural fibre is hypoallergenic and can be worn close to the skin. Her experience stems from a marketing background, with more than 12 years of experience consulting fashion-forward entrepreneurs. Once thoroughly clean and dry, the cotton goes to the gin stand where circular saws with small, sharp teeth pluck the fiber from the seed. And if you're tired of reading, have a little watch of this: Cotton has a number of properties that make it a very desirable fabric. Spinning Yarn. However, not all cotton is organic. Learn more ». Once here, the cotton seed is cleaned of dirt, stems and leaves. These are then fed to a machine called the “gin”.
Modern looms work at great speeds, interlacing the length-wise yarns (warp) and the crosswise yarns (weft). Fibers. Flowering is very brief, and in just a few days after the flower appears, it is gone, and in its place remains the part of the plant that ripens into a pod called a boll. Will 5G Impact Our Cell Phone Plans (or Our Health?! And if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us: [email protected]. Almost every part of the plant including the lint, cotton seed, stalks and seed hulls are useful in some way or the other. Now seeing all these discount cotton print fabrics sold wholesale, all I can remember is how much we hated walking up and down those fields, and how much cotton it takes to make any decent amount of cotton.
Of the approximate 7.6 billion bales of cotton manufactured yearly in the United States, more than 50 percent is used for clothing, more than a third for home furnishings and the rest is used in industrial applications such as book bindings, zipper tapes and coffee filters. Once the fibers are aligned in a process called carding, they naturally interlock as they are twisted and flattened for spinning. Next, the harvested cotton is converted into modules (envision a long, tall rectangle of compressed cotton that would fit perfectly into the back of a tractor trailer). Weft is the yarn that runs crosswise in woven goods and may be referred to as filling yarn. Now that you have a better understanding of how cotton is grown and processed, it’s much easier to see how it is used. Carding The process of making cotton fabric has become a highly industrialized one, especially in developed countries. The wads of cotton are put through a carding machine, which straightens them, allowing the fibers to lie parallel to one another. These strands are spun through different methods depending on the yarn thickness or count desired for weaving or knitting fabric, then wound on bobbins.
For basic weaving — which is a basket-like grid — rows of warp yarns are strung on the loom vertically, while a shuttle weaves the weft yarn through them horizontally. To produce cotton balls it is loosely spun and bound, bleached and sterilized. Afterwards, they are combed and bleached with hypochlorite or peroxide before the fibers are spun. It also exposes both cotton growers and consumers to toxic carcinogenic chemicals that are used during production. This natural fibre is obtained from cotton bolls (no I haven't spelt that wrong! There are many varieties of cotton, but some of the most popular for manufacturing are the Gossypium arboreum L. and Gossypium barbadense L. The white fluffy balls, referred to as “bolls,” grow in clusters and encase the plant’s seeds. For most colonists, they either made their own homespun from cotton, linen, or wool or they purchased fabric imported from England. Copyright â 2009-2017 Quilting-in-America All rights reserved. What are good tips for buying cotton quilting fabric? This may really age me, but as a child growing up in South Carolina, I picked cotton with my brothers and sisters. Cotton Fabric Uses Bt is the short form for the name of bacteria Bacillus thuringensis from which the gene producing Cry protein was extracted, hence the prefix BT (Actually “Bt”) e.g., Bt cotton, Bt Brinjal etc.