Portal:Textile arts

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The textile arts are those arts and crafts that use plant, animal, or synthetic fibers to construct practical or decorative objects. Textiles cover the human body to protect it from the elements and to send social cues to other people. Textiles are used to store, secure, and protect possessions, and to soften, insulate, and decorate living spaces and surfaces. The word textile is from Latin texere which means "to weave", "to braid" or "to construct". The simplest textile art is felting, in which animal fibers are matted together using heat and moisture. Most textile arts begin with twisting or spinning and plying fibers to make yarn (called thread when it is very fine and rope when it is very heavy). Yarn can then be knotted, looped, braided, knitted or woven to make flexible fabric or cloth, and cloth can be used to make clothing and soft furnishings. All of these items – felt, yarn, fabric, and finished objects – are referred to as textiles. Textiles have been a fundamental part of human life since the beginning of civilization. The history of textile arts is also the history of international trade. Tyrian purple dye was an important trade good in the ancient Mediterranean. The Silk Road brought Chinese silk to India, Africa, and Europe. Tastes for imported luxury fabrics led to sumptuary laws during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The industrial revolution was a revolution of textiles technology: cotton gin, the spinning jenny, and the power loom mechanized production and led to the Luddite rebellion. More about Textile arts... A loom is a machine or device for weaving thread or yarn into textiles. Looms can range from very small hand-held frames, to large free-standing hand looms, to huge automatic mechanical devices. A loom can also refer to an electrical cable assembly or harness i.e. wiring loom. In practice, the basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but the basic function is the same. Eli Whitney Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American inventor best known as the inventor of the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the industrial revolution and shaped the economy of the antebellum South. Whitney's invention made short staple cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery. Despite the social and economic imact of his invention, Whitney lost his profits in legal battles over patent infringement, closed his business, and nearly filed bankruptcy. Afterward Whitney became a firearms manufacturer who supplied muskets to the United States government. He spent the remainder of his career promoting the idea of interchangeable parts for the manufacture of firearms. Although he was not the first to propose the concept of interchangeable parts and never developed a working system of interchangeable parts, he popularized the idea as a useful manufacturing concept. In order to justify the sale price of his contracted firearms to the government he developed improvements in cost accounting that included fixed costs that had gone overlooked in federal estimates for price comparison. ... that Byzantine silk designs include the tree of life, winged horses, and imaginary beasts, along with fashionable images of hunting and quadrigas (pictured)? ...that hand knotted Persian style rugs with Mexican indigenous designs are made in Temoaya, Mexico? ... that invoking paduasoy silk for 18th-century local colour has got historical novelists into errors about a Paduan origin? Byzantine silk is silk woven in the Byzantine Empire (Byzantium) from about the 4th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. The Byzantine capital of Constantinople was the first significant silk-weaving center in Europe. Silk was one of the most important commodities in the Byzantine economy, used by the state both as a means of payment and of diplomacy. Raw silk was bought from China and made up into fine fabrics that commanded high prices throughout the world. Later, silkworms were smuggled into the empire and the overland silk trade gradually became less important. After the reign of Justinian I, the manufacture and sale of silk became an imperial monopoly, only processed in imperial factories, and sold to authorized buyers. Byzantine silks are significant for their brilliant colours, use of gold thread, and intricate designs that approach the pictorial complexity of embroidery in loom-woven fabric. Byzantium dominated silk production in Europe throughout the Early Middle Ages, until the establishment of the Italian silk-weaving industry in the 12th century and the conquest and break-up of the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade (1204). ▼ Textile arts ► Textile artists ► Beadwork ► Indigenous textile art of the Americas ► Lace ► Needlework ► Ropework ► Rugs and carpets ► Sewing ► Tapestries ► Wearable art ► Weaving Parent project Wikipedia:WikiProject Arts Main project Textile Arts WikiProject Participants Related projects WikiProject Fashion  • WikiProject Knots  • WikiProject Sculpture  • WikiProject Visual arts What are WikiProjects? Featured articles 2 Good articles 2 Template:/box-footer Textile arts Fundamentals: • Crochet • Embroidery • Knitting • Lace • Needlework • Sewing • Spinning • Textile • Weaving • Yarn Additional topics: Beadwork • Carpet • Clothing • Dyeing • Felt • Fiber • History of clothing and textiles • Linen • Macramé • Patchwork • Quilting • Rug making • Sewing needle • Tapestry • Timeline of clothing and textiles technology • Traditional rug hooking • Wool Template:/box-header {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Textile Arts/to do}} Template:/box-footer Arts Culture Fashion Visual arts What are portals? List of portals Featured portals