How Is Cotton Made Into Thread?

History

• Cotton was first harvested in East Africa, where people from Pakistan cultivated the plant. The English began to import raw cotton from other countries and started weaving cotton in the 1600s. In the 1700s, English textile manufacturers developed machines to spin thread and weave cloth in large quantities. Cotton is now one of the most common fabrics in the world. The United States, Russia, China, and India are all major producers of cotton.

Harvesting

• Cotton grows best in warm, tropical climates and takes about five months to grow. Cotton is usually planted between February and June. As the cotton plants grow, flower buds emerge and open. When the flower petals fall off, the rest of the plant ripens and grows into a cotton ̶0;boil̶1; with fluffed fibers. After the cotton boils are harvested, they are ̶0;ginned̶1; to remove seeds from the cotton fiber before being shipped off to a mill.

Cleaning and Picking

• Once in the textile mill, the cotton bails are mixed and cleaned through a process of blending and picking. Cleaning machines mix the cotton and remove debris. Picking machines then separate the cotton fibers into smaller pieces, while also beating the fibers repeatedly to shake out any remaining dirt.

Carding and Combing

• The cotton fibers are fed into a carding machine, which separates the fibers and lies them side by side, as if to comb through them. This process of combing aligns the fibers and separates the long, strong fibers form the rest. As the carding machine combs through the fibers, the cotton is worked into a soft, untwisted rope called a sliver.

Roving

• The cotton rope, or sliver, is fed into more machines that pull twist and pull the soft rope until it is thin. When this process is completed, the cotton fiber is called ̶0;roving.̶1; Cotton fiber then reaches the spinning frame, it is twisted rapidly and wound onto bobbins as cotton yarn or thread.

Weaving

• Cotton threads are woven into fabric on a loom. A loom is a machine that holds cotton threads in horizontal and vertical directions, interweaving them to produce a piece of fabric. Originally, fabrics were hand-woven on manual looms. Today, modern loom work at great speeds to produce fabric quickly and efficiently.