Weaving
Weaving is an ancient textile art and craft that involves placing two threads or yarn made of fibre onto a warp and weft of a loom and turning them into cloth. This cloth can be plain (in one colour or a simple pattern), or it can be woven in decorative or artistic designs, including tapestries.There are many kinds of weaving. A great many commercial fabrics are woven on a large variety of automatic dobbie looms with the more intricate tapestries woven on Jacquard looms. However, many craftspeople still use hand looms to produce fine fabrics and tapestries in a traditional manner.
History of Weaving
Enslaved women worked as weavers during the Sumerian Era. They would wash wool fibers in hot water and wood-ash soap and then dry them. Next, they would beat out the dirt and card the wool. The wool was then graded, bleached, and spun into a thread. The spinners would pull out fibers and twist them together. This was done by either rolling fibers between palms or using a hooked stick. The thread was then placed on a wooden or bone spindle and rotated on a clay whorl which operated like a flywheel.
The slaves would then work in three-woman teams on looms, where they stretched the threads, after which they passed threads over and under each other at perpendicular angles. The cloth was then taken to a fuller.
Weaving in Colonial America
Weaving was not allowed by the British in Colonial America. Colonists were supposed to send unfinished goods like cotton and flax to Britain and buy finished cloth back from England. Nonetheless, many people wove cloth in Colonial America.
In Colonial times the colonists mostly used cotton and flax for weaving because the English would not send them sheep or wool. They could get one cotton crop each fall. Flax was harvested in the summer.
Here is how colonists prepared wool for weaving. First, they would shear the sheep with spring back clippers. They would have to keep the sheep's feet from touching anything as you shear it so it doesn't try to get away. They would try to cut the wool off the sheep in one big chunk because that way they would get long fibers. They would sheer the sheep in the spring so the sheep won't get cold like it would in the winter.
After shearing, they would wash the wool in hot water to get out the dirt and grease (lanolin). Then they would card the wool to make all the fibers go the same way. Now the wool would be ready to spin into yarn.
Cotton was harvested from little stalks. The cotton boll looks sort of like a little snow ball. It is white, soft and fluffy. It has seeds. You have to take out the seeds before you card it. Removing the seeds was difficult and took a very long time. A card is two brushes that you brush against each other. After you card the cotton, it is ready to spin into yarn.
Linen is made from flax fibre. To prepare flax for weaving, they would beat flax stalks with a scutching tool to crush them and then pull the fibres through a heckling comb to get it ready for spinning. A scutching tool looks like a paper cutter but instead of having a big knife it has a blunt arm. A heckling comb is like a brush with metal bristles that you pull flax stalks through.
After they spun the yarn they could can dye it with berries, bark, flowers, herbs or weeds. Children would help the adults gather these things.
After the yarn is made they whould prepare the loom. The yarn is put on the loom in two directions. The yarn that is attached to the loom is called the warp and the yarn that you will weave is called the woof or weft. The woof (weft) is wrapped around the shuttle. The woof (weft) goes over and under the warp.
A plain weave was what most people liked in Colonial times. Almost everything was plain woven then. Sometimes designs were woven into the fabric but mostly designs were added after weaving. The colonists would usually add designs by using either wood block prints or embroidering.
The text below was originally at "Weavers weaving" and is to be integrated with this the above.
This is an article from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897. This article is written from a nineteenth century Christian viewpoint, and may not reflect modern opinions or recent discoveries in Biblical scholarship. Please help the Wikipedia by bringing this article up to date.
Weavers Weaving - Weaving was an art practised in very early times (Ex. 35:35). The Egyptians were specially skilled in it (Isa. 19:9; Ezek. 27:7), and some have regarded them as its inventors.
In the wilderness, the Hebrews practised it (Ex. 26:1, 8; 28:4, 39; Lev. 13:47). It is referred to in subsequent times as specially the women's work (2 Kings 23:7; Prov. 31:13, 24). No mention of the loom is found in Scripture, but we read of the "shuttle" (Job 7:6), "the pin" of the beam (Judg. 16:14), "the web" (13, 14), and "the beam" (1 Sam. 17:7; 2 Sam. 21:19). The rendering, "with pining sickness," in Isa. 38:12 (A.V.) should be, as in the Revised Version, "from the loom," or, as in the margin, "from the thrum." We read also of the "warp" and "woof" (Lev. 13:48, 49, 51-53, 58, 59), but the Revised Version margin has, instead of "warp," "woven or knitted stuff."
From Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)
In computer science, weaving describes the process of combining different aspects into a complete application. See Aspect-oriented programming.
