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.