Can there be a site selling fabric without the obligatory fabric reference articles? Not really, so here I am with my take. This will be a loose series that I will update here in the first paragraph as they are posted. Any time I’m wrong in either fact or opinion, please email me at carol@greatbridgefabrics or drop a comment on Facebook and we can have a conversation. I welcome hearing from readers.
Clothing as Technology
Would you believe that clothing is the single most important piece of technology in your life? In the grand scheme of human history, it’s right there with making fire, but less fun than domesticating dogs. It’s easy in the 21st century to only see tech as AI, robots or whatever idea gazillionaires are selling, but technology just means a practical application of knowledge.
Fact: Anatomically modern humans are tropical savanna animals
Fact: Humans have a world-wide range. The entire planet is not a tropical savanna.
However, it can always be tropical savanna temperatures next to your skin, courtesy of your clothing. The cushion of air right next to my skin warmed by my body heat is the reason I can live at 36° north and not die 9 months of the year. I saw somewhere ages ago the reminder that eventually hypothermia can strike a naked person below 80°F. It matches nicely all of the marine survival charts that are out there. Side note, when I was in the Navy the survival time chart saying 80°F water was an indefinite time frame had the fun note of Sharks penned in underneath. Air and water aren’t really different, just water is faster at changing core body temperature.
Now, I have no special insights on early humans, but my supposition would be that animal hides were the original clothes. I’m sure they were charming to wear but fortunately at some point, someone figured out taking fibers and spinning them into longer lengths. Animal hair would have been an obvious starting point but also plant fibers like flax. Unfortunately, figuring out a timeline for when people started using fibers to create fabrics is impossible because those textiles didn’t survive to the present, but some of the tools used have.
Naturally, spinning fibers into lengths doesn’t just lead to fabrics on the body. For a non-agricultural society, creating ropes for game traps or fishing nets is vital for calories. Once someone figured out weaving together all of these threads, it’s off to the races, everything from tent cloth to lead ropes for livestock and anything you can think of in between. For my purposes, I’m going to focus on textiles used for garments because that’s my favorite application.
Woven fabrics are likely the far older process as a plain weave is pretty straight forward to create. A bunch of long threads, the warp, are interlaced one over, one under with weft threads creates a smooth, durable surface suitable for a lot of uses. This type of fabric is very stable, and even when damaged, easy enough to darn, patch, weave in new threads, pick your repair plan of choice.
Knits on the other hand are funky. They are formed with interlocking loops. Knits introduce mechanical stretch, which is great when dealing with hands and feet. The fabric itself can be constructed with a single length of fiber, lending itself to handwork. Where woven cloth ultimately wants a loom of some form to create any useful widths, knitting can be done with a simple set of needles. Obviously, modern industrial production is different but I’m asking you to think pre-Industrial Revolution here. There are Roman-era artifacts that resemble knitted socks but are made in a completely different manner, so what we think of as knit fabric only goes back a little over a thousand years.
Future installments in this series will be diving into more technical aspects of construction, common fibers used, and anything I find interesting in the realm of fabrics. Thanks for stopping by and don’t forget to check out the array of fabrics available to you at Great Bridge Fabrics.
References:
Hypothermia chart
Textiles on Wikipedia