HOW SILK IS PRODUCED.. .
RAGINI GUPTA SECTION-H
step 1: raising silkworms and harvesting cocoons
. silkworms are the larvae of ‘bombyx mori’ moths.. an ounce of silkworm eggs yields about 35,000 worms, during gestation, the eggs must stay between 25 and 31 °C, in a tray with high humidity. as they hatch, each of the tiny creatures must be carefully moved to a ‘petri dish’, a circular flat bamboo tray, to be fed with fresh mulberry leaves several times a day.
a silk farmer must have a ready supply of mulberry leaves and fruits close at hand . there are times of the year when the mulberry leaves are not around... continued food shortages can decrease the quality of silk any survivors make.if there are shortages anyway, lettuce makes a decent emergency dish, as long as it is well-washed (pesticides kill) and dried thoroughly.
an easy test confirms their readiness to cocooning. the farmer picks them up and looks between their rear pair of legs,from the underside. the worms suddenly stop eating and raise their heads - another sign that they are ready for the all-important job of spinning cocoons. at that stage they are removed from their feeding trayseach silkworm now doubles itself up on its back, and by contracting secretes, from an opening under its mouth, a steadystream of liquid silk, coated with sericin, which hardens on exposure to air. they're starting to lay out the support strands forafter some 36 hours, the worms are sealed within a yellow cocoon, embarked on the process of metamorphosing into a moth.their cocoons, although they may not yet be serious about cocooning.
the worms have spun thousands of gossamer little cocoonsthe satisfactory cocoons are now in a clean tray. see the lustrous, golden color.care must be taken not to damage them when removing from the old trays. the entire process, from silkworm egg to complete cocoon, takes about twenty-five days.silk worms transform themselves, inside the cocoon, into a chrysalis and then into a butterfly...
step 2: thread extraction
the fresh and fragile cocoons are ready to be scooped into the reeling pot. each cocoon consists of many yards of tightly woven silk thread.. in the reeling process, a special wooden device is used to locate the end of the filament, after which it must be carefully unwound, a process that not only requires hard work over a boiling pot, but also practiced skill to keep the threads unbroken.in the cultivation of silkworms, to not damage the continuity of the thread, the cocoons are placed in boiling water to kill the chrysalis.
the silk thread is rolled on a reel.
step 3: dyeing
after washing and degumming, there is a bleaching (and drying) process before dyeing.most of the dyes are obtained from natural resources of the immediate sourrounding, offering an exquisite palette of different hues. these leaves of the wild indigo plant are a major source of natural black or blue, other colors are obtained from: yellow - jackfruit orange - bisea red - sappanwood
dried indigo. the colour derived from soaking fabric in hot mixture of indigo leaves.the bundles of threads are soaked in the dye pots for several times over many days to achieve the proper color tone and quality. then the colours need to be fixed these traditional methods of dye production have elsewhere al most been driven to commercial extinction,and dyeing with synthetic indigo and a wide variety of other synthetic colors is booming.
after the process the threads are hanging out to dry.
step 4: spinning
even today, despite the introduction of a wide range of new techniques, the traditional spinning wheelis still necessary for a variety of purposes. spinning wheels are used for unwinding dyed silk skeins onto bobbins for the warping process.
the silk thread moves from the bobbins through a worker’s hands onto a spinning device. finalized silk thread, ready to
be woven.
step 5: weaving
setting up the warp. the threads of each spool pass though suspended loops, then through holes in a warping paddle. the large warping board stands upright. the warp being drawn up and down as one works from left to right pegs. the end is slipped onto the warp beam and the whole spread evenly before being rolled onto the beam. the weaving begins by pushing down the harness to separate the two sets of warp threads, leaving space to shoot the shuttle alternately back and forth.
weft yarn. the basic weaving technique uses the same or different colors in the warp and weft. some villages are experimenting with new designs and color combinations, yet still using their traditional techniques and basic patterns.shuttle alternately back and forth.and forth. the weaver opens the warp by stepping on pedals. the hands and feet must work in perfect unison to enable the warp and weft yarns to interlace correctly.
step 6: ikat
‘ikat’ - a term adopted from the malay word ‘mengikat’, which means ‘to bind, tie or wrap around’ - is known in thai as ‘mud mii’. the process involves dyeing only certain segments of the yarn, achieved by first wrapping those parts that are to remain undyed.
the warp threads have been stretched onto a frame.the pattern is formed by wrapping dye resist strips onto areas that prevents saturation of color..the 'programmed' pattern appears.the yarn itself gets patterned. along each length of yarn the colour changes according to the precise formula necessary for the greater fabric design of which it forms a part. now after the threads are dyed the loom is set up. the pattern is visible to the weaver when the dyed threads are used as warp.handloom weaving is always extremely complex work.
dying the weft makes it much more difficult to make ikats with precise patterns. the weft is one continuous strand that is woven back and forth, so any errors in how the string is tied and dyed are cumulative.because of this, weft ikats are usually used when the precision of the pattern is not the main concern. rasome patterns become transformed by the weaving process into irregular and erratic designs.