What Is Weaving

Weaving is the textile art and craft that involves placing two threads or yarn made of fiber onto the warp (parallel threads to the selvedge) and weft (perpendicular threads to the selvedge) of a loom and turning them into cloth. This cloth can be plain (in one color or a simple pattern), or it can be woven in decorative or artistic designs, including tapestries.

The majority of commercial fabrics are woven on computer-controlled Jacquard looms. In the past, simpler fabrics were woven on other dobby looms and the Jacquard harness adaptation was reserved for more complex patterns. The efficiency of the Jacquard loom makes it more economical for mills to use them to weave all of their fabrics, regardless of the complexity of the design.

Fabric in which the warp and/or weft is tie-dyed before weaving is called ikat. Fabric decorated using a wax resist method is called batik.

Process

In general, weaving involves the interlacing of two sets of threads at right angles to each other: the warp and the weft. The warp's many threads are held taut and in parallel order by means of a loom. The weft thread crosses the warp in some over/under sequence. The nature of that sequence gives rise to many possible weave structures from the simplest plain weave, through twills and satins to complex computer-generated interlacing.

Both warp and weft can be visible in the final product. By spacing the warp more closely, it can completely cover the weft that binds it, giving a "warp-faced" textile. Conversely, if the warp is spread out, the weft can slide down and completely cover the warp, giving a "weft-faced" textile, such as a tapestry. There are a variety of loom styles for hand weaving and tapestry. In tapestry, the image is created by only placing weft in certain areas, rather than in the weave structure itself.

History

There are some indications that weaving was already known in the Paleolithic era. Neolithic textiles are well known from finds in pile dwellings in Switzerland. They are made of flax or tree bast, wool has only been attested since the Bronze Age. Plain weaves and tabbies predominate.

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.

The mechanization of weaving leading to an industry-scale operation took place in the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Numerous innovations took place taking the home-based artisan's activity from a labor intensive; man-powered undertaking to mass-production under the steam power.

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.

In preparing wool for weaving, colonists would first shear the sheep with spring back clippers. This was done while keeping the sheep's feet from touching anything so it would not try to break free. They would try to cut the wool off the sheep in one big chunk because that way they would get long fibers. Sheep-shearing was done in the spring so that the fleece would re-grow in time for the winter.

After shearing, wool would be washed in hot water to get out the dirt and grease (lanolin), then carded, at which point it would be ready for spinning into yarn.

A card is a set of two brushes rubbed against each other with the fiber in the middle. The process of carding lines up all the fibers in the same direction, making the wool or cotton ready for spinning.

Cotton was harvested from little stalks. The cotton ball is white, roughly spherical and fluffy. Its seeds had to be removed before carding, a difficult and time-consuming process. (later a "cotton gin" was invented which took a lot of the work out of seed removal). After carding it would be ready for spinning.

Linen is made from flax fiber. To prepare flax for weaving, the stalks would be beaten with a scutching tool to crush them, and then pulled 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, it would be dyed with berries, bark, flowers, herbs or weeds, often gathered by children.

With the yarn made, they would prepare the loom. The strings on a loom run in two directions. The yarn that is attached to the loom is called the warp, and the woof or weft is woven through it. The woof is wrapped around the shuttle, and woven alternately over and under the warp strings.

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.

Warp is  the set of lengthwise threads attached to a loom

Weft or woof is the yarn which is shuttled back and forth across the warp to create a woven fabric. In North America, it is sometimes referred to as the "fill" or the "filling yarn". The words woof and weft derive ultimately from the Old English word wefan, "to weave". It has given rise to the expression "woof and warp", meaning literally a fabric (the warp being the lengthwise threads, under and over which the side to side threads—the woof—are woven). 

The weft is a thread or yarn of spun fiber. The original fiber was wool, flax or cotton. Nowadays, many manmade fibers are used in weaving. Because the weft does not have to be stretched in the way that the warp is, it can generally be less strong.

The weft is threaded through the warp using a shuttle. Hand looms were the original weaver's tool, with the shuttle being threaded through alternately raised warps by hand. Inventions during the 18th century spurred the Industrial Revolution, and the hand loom became the more robust spinning frame with the flying shuttle speeding up production of cloth, and then the water frame using water power to automate the weaving process. The power loom followed in the 19th century, when steam power was harnessed.