Last Friday as part of the module we were lucky enough to visit the beautiful village of Slaithwaite (or "Slawit" as it's known to the locals) near Huddersfield in Yorkshire for a fabulous day of exploring the processes behind some of the textile production for which the area is world-famous.
Our first stop of the day was the
Spectrum Yarns Spinning Mill. The manager described how yarn gets from a sheep to being usable yarn: it gets shorn off the sheep, sorted by quality, washed, and then carded before being spun into yarn. Australian wool is more likely to be used for wearable textiles than British wool – British wool is coarser, due to the sheep spending most of their time outdoors in the cold and rain, and so is more likely to be used for carpets and bus seat covers.
In the factory their work begins after the carding process, which is where all the wool gets combed to get all the fibres in line with each other. This means that the factory’s raw material is balls of combed wool, all wound up like giant skeins of yarn. There were containers FULL of balls like this – It was amazing to think of all the potential yarn that could be made from it!
There were all sorts of interesting machines, like this one that takes all the "neps" or impurities out of the combed wool. You can see here that it is blue – that is because the wool has been dyed before spinning to keep the colour even, although dye can be added later in the spinning process as well.
Elsewhere were spinning machines all working simultaneously to create the plies later to be twisted into yarn...
Our next stop was the
Very English Weaving Company, so we could see how the yarn was then put to use in fabric production
Seeing behind the scenes here felt like stepping back in time – there were traditional materials and traditional machines...
Although this newer machine for creating the warp (the threads that run vertically on a garment) was quite impressive!
The weaving machines themselves were complicated - it obviously takes a very skilled worker. We were told that the people working the machines have to be a machine technician, and a weaver, as well as having other skills necessary for the job.
We could see some works in progress while we were there – the colour combinations on some of the looms were stunning:
When designing they make use of colour cards which help them select which colours they may want to combine. This also allows for customers to ask for custom orders and combinations.
It was so nice to see such wonderful work being made in the UK - it is called the Very English Weaving Company for a reason!
The last stages in the fabric process (fabric ready for garments) were discovered when we visited
McNair Shirts - a producer of luxury skiing and snowboarding shirts in Slaithwaite, with many of their materials being sourced within the village. We were able to see some of the prototype shirts, and how they have developed the design over time. Each shirt has a little bit about the company written in them...
What was really interesting was hearing the design process that went into the shirts, and about the materials that they are made of. Here is a before and after picture of what the fabric looks like to start with (on the left) and after felting (on the right)... This is what creates their unique fabric.
Our very last stop of the day was to visit
Schofield and Smith.. It was dressmaker's heaven, with bolts and bolts of fabric on the shelves ready for despatch to be fashioned into garments by bespoke tailors around Britain, and all over the world.
My last photo is this one - which is simply of a few bolts of fabric, which summed up all the processes I saw during the day. I had seen where the yarn that went into it came from, I had seen how it was made, and there it was, sitting on the shelf, looking very pretty. It was really cool to be able to see those few bolts of fabric, knowing exactly where they came from, and I know it will definitely make me think more about where other things around me come from in the future.
(
We are extremely grateful to Chris Sykes of Schofield and Smith for hosting our visit).
