1The art of weaving has been around since the Stone Age.
2Traditional weavers use techniques and designs that reflect their cultural origins.
3Today's fashion industry has built on this tradition to produce fine wool garments.
4Designers keep a record of the fabrics they have created over the years.
5They pin samples in books based on quality, colors, and patterns for their customers to choose from.
6This is what cashmere goat hair looks like when it arrives at the wool mill.
7Short fibers called flocks go through a carding machine.
8This machine opens up the fibers and mixes colors together.
9The carding process removes impurities and reduces the fibers to a flat layer.
10The machine combs and twists the layer of fiber in preparation for spinning.
11The spinner separates the layer into threads
12and winds each one on bobbins of over 40 pounds.
13An operator loads yarn into a dyeing machine.
14The entire fiber drying process takes about two hours for a reel this size.
15Uncarded blocks of hair called wool tops are used to make worsted yarn.
16A worker feeds the ribbon-like thread into a blending machine.
17The blending process merges 12 threads into one large strip.
18The machine re-combs and twists the blended fibers,
19then spins them into a single strand.
20The coning machine winds the single thread around a cone
21by pulling it through a tensioning device with a series of spindles underneath.
22This machine can cone 20 pounds of wool in about one hour.
23Another spinning machine slowly unwinds worsted wool bobbins.
24It accelerates as the threads run through a tensioning device and onto spindles.
25Even though the machine processes dozens of bobbins simultaneously,
26this process will last several hours.
27The set of threads that will make up the woven cloth is called the warp.
28Hundreds of parallel threads wind up on this roll called the warping machine.
29These rolls can stretch several miles long.
30The warp is now ready for weaving.
31This shuttle loom holds the warp under tension
32while it interweaves the over and under threads using two sets of weaving needles.
33This moving part, the beater, keeps the fabric under tension as it comes out of the loom and onto the cloth beam.
34This rapier loom can weave fabrics four or five times faster than an automatic shuttle loom
35and about 200 times faster than a hand-operated loom.
36The completed fabric goes to quality control.
37A worker performs a visual check, looking for any defects in the fabric.
38If she finds a broken thread, she repairs it by hand.
39Using a sewing needle, she replaces the broken thread with a new one.
40Once the fabric passes quality control, it goes through a two-hour cleaning process.
41Then the cloth rolls through a steaming machine
42before accumulating at the end of the production line.
43The finishing process for a woven cloth can take up to a week.
44Designers study the fabrics and choose arrangements to make a collection.
45They mark selected patterns with codes and cut out samples.
46Then they make a sample booklet of their fabrics for customers to choose from.
47The fabric collection changes twice a year,
48providing a wide variety of styles suited to the season.