TEXTILES

TEXTILES

Until the present century, virtually all textiles were made from four natural products: flax, cotton, wool, and silk. The first two are of plant origin, and the others animal. Today, a fifth source has been added plastics, which are man-made artificial products. Best-known of these new synthetic textiles are rayon and nylon.

There are three stages in the manufacture of a textile. The first is the gathering, cleaning, sorting, and other processing of the raw material. The second is spinning, in which the fibers of the raw material are twisted together to make continuous thread. The last stage is woven, the manufacture of cloth out of thread.