Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool.
Worsted is a high-quality type of wool yarn, the fabric made from this yarn, and a yarn weight category. The name derives from Worstead, a village in the English county of Norfolk. That village, together with North Walsham and Aylsham, formed a manufacturing centre for yarn and cloth in the 12th century, when pasture enclosure and liming rendered the East Anglian soil too rich for the older agrarian sheep breeds. In the same period, many weavers from the County of Flanders moved to Norfolk. "Worsted" yarns/fabrics are distinct from woollens : the former is considered stronger, finer, smoother, and harder than the latter.
Felt is a textile that is produced by matting, condensing, and pressing fibers together. Felt can be made of natural fibers such as wool or animal fur, or from synthetic fibers such as petroleum-based acrylic or acrylonitrile or wood pulp–based rayon. Blended fibers are also common. Natural fiber felt has special properties that allow it to be used for a wide variety of purposes. It is "fire-retardant and self-extinguishing; it dampens vibration and absorbs sound; and it can hold large amounts of fluid without feeling wet..."
Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered with "card clothing", a firm flexible material embedded with metal pins. It breaks up locks and unorganised clumps of fibre and then aligns the individual fibres to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fibre for spinning, carding is the step that comes after teasing.
Fuller's earth is a term for various clays used as an absorbent, filter, or bleaching agent. Products labeled fuller's earth typically consist of palygorskite (attapulgite) or bentonite. Primary modern uses include as absorbents for oil, grease, and animal waste, and as a carrier for pesticides and fertilizers. Minor uses include filtering, clarifying, and decolorizing; as an active and inactive ingredient in beauty products; and as a filler in paint, plaster, adhesives, and pharmaceuticals. It also has a number of uses in the film industry and on stage.
Flannel is a soft woven fabric, of varying fineness. Flannel was originally made from carded wool or worsted yarn, but is now often made from either wool, cotton, or synthetic fiber. Flannel is commonly used to make tartan clothing, blankets, bed sheets, sleepwear, and several other uses.
Tenterhooks or tenter hooks are hooked nails in a device called a tenter. Tenters were wooden frames which were used as far back as the 14th century in the process of making woollen cloth. They are now superseded by stenter pins.
Posting or postadh is a term formerly used in Scotland for a process in washing clothes. It means to trample with the feet, or the act of trampling or treading. In scouring woollen clothing, blankets or coarse linen, when the strength of the arms and manual friction are found insufficient, Highland women put them in a tub with a prop – or quantity of water, then, with petticoats tucked up, they began to "post", which they continued until every part of the clothes received an effectual cleansing. When three women were employed, one usually tramped in the middle, and the other two tramped around her. Treading cloth with the feet, a time-consuming and laborious practice, has long been superseded by mechanical methods, starting in the Industrial Revolution.
Broadcloth is a dense, plain woven cloth, historically made of wool. The defining characteristic of broadcloth is not its finished width but the fact that it was woven much wider and then heavily milled in order to shrink it to the required width. The effect of the milling process is to draw the yarns much closer together than could be achieved in the loom and allow the individual fibres of the wool to bind together in a felting process, which results in a dense, blind face cloth with a stiff drape which is highly weather-resistant, hard wearing and capable of taking a cut edge without the need for being hemmed.
Waulking songs are Scottish folk songs, traditionally sung in the Gaelic language by women while fulling (waulking) cloth. This practice involved a group of women, who traditionally prepared cloth, rhythmically beating newly woven tweed or tartan cloth against a table or similar surface to lightly felt it and shrink it to better repel water. Simple, beat-driven songs were used to accompany the work.
The Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills is a museum of industrial heritage located in Armley, near Leeds, in West Yorkshire, Northern England. The museum includes collections of textile machinery, railway equipment and heavy engineering amongst others.
The manufacture of textiles is one of the oldest of human technologies. To make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fiber from which a yarn can be made, primarily by spinning. The yarn is processed by knitting or weaving, which turns yarn into cloth. The machine used for weaving is the loom. For decoration, the process of colouring yarn or the finished material is dyeing. For more information of the various steps, see textile manufacturing.
Helmshore Mills are two mills built on the River Ogden in Helmshore, Lancashire. Higher Mill was built in 1796 for William Turner, and Whitaker's Mill was built in the 1820s by the Turner family. In their early life they alternated between working wool and cotton. By 1920 they were working shoddy as condensor mule mills; and equipment has been preserved and is still used. The mills closed in 1967 and they were taken over by the Higher Mills Trust, whose trustees included historian and author Chris Aspin and politician Dr Rhodes Boyson, who maintained it as a museum. The mills are said to the most original and best-preserved examples of both cotton spinning and woollen fulling left in the country that are still operational.
In textile manufacturing, finishing refers to the processes that convert the woven or knitted cloth into a usable material and more specifically to any process performed after dyeing the yarn or fabric to improve the look, performance, or "hand" (feel) of the finish textile or clothing. The precise meaning depends on context.
Otterburn Mill is a former textile mill in Otterburn, Northumberland, northeast England. It lies just south of the Otterburn Tower along the A696 road next to a bridge over the River Rede. It was owned by the Waddell family for many years and is over 250 years old. The mill is noted for its pram rugs and its crowning moment was on the birth of Princess Elizabeth in 1926, when Buckingham Palace contacted the mill requesting a rug for the royal pram. Otterburn Mill is now a shop selling outdoor, country and lifestyle clothing for men, women and children. Rena's Country Kitchen is an onsite café. Much of the historic machinery can still be seen and the history of the Waddell family is showcased across the site.
Queensland Woollen Manufacturing Company mill is a heritage-listed mill at 42 & 42B The Terrace, North Ipswich, City of Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. It is also known as Australian Fabric Manufacturers Ltd and Boral Hancock Plywood. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 19 September 2008.
The woollen industry in Wales was at times the country's most important industry, though it often struggled to compete with the better-funded woollen mills in the north of England, and almost disappeared during the 20th century. There is continued demand for quality Welsh woollen products.
The Shrewsbury Drapers Company was a trade organisation founded in 1462 in the town of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. The members were wholesale dealers in wool and later woollen cloth. The Company dominated the trade in Welsh cloth and in 1566 was given a regional monopoly in the Welsh Wool trade. In the seventeenth century the trade had difficulties particularly during the English Civil war and then further declined in the eighteenth century with the industrialisation of cloth production and the improvement of transport infrastructure. This made it practical for merchants from Liverpool and elsewhere to travel into Wales and purchase cloth directly from the producers. The Reform Acts of the early nineteenth century took away the power of the trade guilds and the trade ceased. Since that time the Shrewsbury Drapers Company has survived and continues as a charity that runs almshouses in Shrewsbury.
Bay was a napped coarse woolen fabric, not technically considered cloth, introduced to England by Flemish immigrants in the 16th century. It was produced in Essex at Colchester and Bocking, and also in various towns in the West of England. Production continued until the 19th century. Bays were made into linings for furniture, hangings, curtains, bed surroundings, and cloaks.
Scouring is a preparatory treatment of certain textile materials. Scouring removes soluble and insoluble impurities found in textiles as natural, added and adventitious impurities, for example, oils, waxes, fats, vegetable matter, as well as dirt. Removing these contaminants through scouring prepares the textiles for subsequent processes such as bleaching and dyeing. Though a general term, "scouring" is most often used for wool. In cotton, it is synonymously called "boiling out", and in silk, and "boiling off".
