What Is Spinning (textiles)?

Textiles are all around us. We wear them, use them when we sleep, and decorate our homes with them. But, have you ever thought about how they are made? One important step is spinning the yarn. Spinnings is the process of taking textile fibers and filaments and making them into yarn. For thousands of years, people spun natural fibers into yarn by hand. Today, spinnings involves many methods and different machines, depending on what kind of yarn is being made.

Before we discuss how it works, let’s review some basics. Fibers are short, natural hairs that come from plants like cotton and animals like sheep. Filaments are long continuous single strands. Silk is a natural filament, but most filaments are synthetic or man-made materials, like polyester and nylon. Converting fibers and the substances that form synthetic filaments into yarn involves different methods of it.

Basic Process of Spinning Yarn

First, let’s look at the basics of spinning, which can be done with very simple tools. To make a natural yarn, you gather cleaned and prepared natural fibers like wool or cotton. Using a tool called a spindle, a rounded stick with tapered ends, you pull the fibers by hand onto it as the spindle twists. To aid the process, the spindle is weighted by something called a whorl, a small, round stone or piece of wood which allows the spinning to be maintained at a regular speed. The process of pulling and twisting results in a piece of yarn.