|
Silk Route
Chinese Empress Shiling Ti discovered it first in her teacup. And since then its natural sheen, vibrant colours, light weight, and other such exquisite qualities have made silk the most favourite drape of all times.
And the Queen of Textiles.
Fibre Facts
 Silk is a continuous-filament fibre consisting of fibroin protein. The process of rearing silkworms for the production of raw silk is called Sericulture.
It is secreted from two salivary glands in the head of a silkworm larva, along with a gum called Sericin, which cements the two filaments together. It is forced out in liquid form, through openings called Spinnerets, which solidifies when it comes in contact with air.
Silkworms spin about 1 mile of filament and completely enclose themselves in a cocoon in about two or three days. But, the amount of usable silk in each cocoon is small. 5500 silkworms are required to produce 1 kg of silk.
China and Japan are the two
main producers, together manu-facturing more than 50 per cent of the world production each year.
Bombyx mori is the most widely used commercial species of silkworm.
”
Silk Sins
But, silk production is not as pretty as it sounds.
When the silkworm cocoons are placed in hot water to ready the filaments for reeling, it also kills the silkworm larvae. Because when the silkworm metamorphoses into a moth, it secretes a fluid to dissolve the silk so it can come out of the cocoon. This damages the cocoon and the silk then becomes a lower quality.
Though some silkworms may be allowed to live to be used for breeding, most of them are killed to get better quality silk.
Silkworm larvae are fed mulberry leaves.
When they are about 35 days old (and 10,000 times heavier than when they hatch), they spin a silk cocoon.
The cocoons are immersed in hot water to free the silk filaments.
The outside ends of the filaments are found by brushing the cocoons.
The filaments are then wound on a reel. One cocoon contains approximately 1,000 yards of filament. The silk at this stage is known as Raw silk.
A yarn can now be formed by combining several threads of silk.
|
