My Visit to a Traditional Textile Mill

My Visit to a Traditional Textile Mill

A journey through threads, looms, colours, and beautiful sarees

Introduction

Hello Everyone! Here I come with my next blog. It is based on my recent visit to a traditional textile mill.

Are you wondering where and which industry? Let me tell you — we visited a textile industry near Theur, Pune.

As soon as we reached the mill, we could hear a loud rhythmic sound from outside. To me, it felt almost like music. There were many power looms weaving beautiful sarees in different designs, colours, and patterns.

Seeing the looms in action made me curious about many things: How are the designs made? How are the threads coloured? What are the threads made of? How do threads come together to create various patterns?

I am sure you may also have many such questions. So, let me take you through what I saw, studied, and learned during my visit.

What is Textile Design?

Textile design is the process of creating designs for woven, knitted, printed, or surface-ornamented fabrics. In simple words, textile design is the process of transforming raw materials into finished textile products.

Fibre, yarn, and finishes are the key elements considered during the textile design process. It is a creative field connected to fashion design, carpet manufacturing, home furnishings, and many other cloth-related industries.

Our clothing, carpets, curtains, towels, rugs, and sarees are all examples of textile design in our everyday lives.

What I Saw There

Making thread reels
This is the process of making reels using the required coloured threads.
Fly shuttle for weaving
The reels made in the previous step are inserted into a fly shuttle for the weaving process.
Shuttle pit loom setup
The shuttle pit loom is set up according to the design patterns to be created for sarees.
Saree and border weaving
In this process, we can see the beautiful patterns of the main saree and the border design.
Rows of looms weaving sarees
Here, many looms are arranged in a row, weaving sarees of various designs and patterns.

I was really excited to see all the looms in action and understand how raw threads are converted into beautiful sarees as finished products. This visit inspired me to read more about textile design and the overall textile-making process.

Different Types of Textiles

Textiles are made from many different materials. These materials can mainly be divided into four sources:

  1. Animal fibres: Wool and silk
  2. Plant fibres: Cotton, flax, jute, and bamboo
  3. Mineral fibres: Asbestos and glass fibre
  4. Synthetic fibres: Nylon, polyester, acrylic, and rayon

The first three sources are natural, while synthetic fibres are man-made.

Process Steps in Textile Making

From fibre to cloth, the textile-making process mainly goes through four important stages:

  1. Spinning: Converting fibres into yarn
  2. Weaving or Knitting: Converting yarn into fabric
  3. Dyeing or Printing: Adding colour and design to fabric
  4. Garment Manufacturing: Converting finished fabric into garments

Basic Textile Manufacturing Flow

TEXTILE FIBRES → YARN MANUFACTURING → YARN ↓ YARN → FABRIC MANUFACTURING → GREY FABRICS ↓ GREY FABRICS → WET PROCESSING → FINISHED FABRICS ↓ FINISHED FABRICS → GARMENTS MANUFACTURING → GARMENTS

Flow Chart of Spinning

BLOW ROOM ↓ CARDING ↓ DRAWING ↓ LAP FORMING ↓ COMBING ↓ DRAWING ↓ ROVING ↓ RING SPINNING

Flow Chart of Weaving

YARN FROM SPINNING ↓ DOUBLING AND TWISTING ↓ WINDING ↓ CREELING ↓ WARPING ↓ SIZING ↓ DRAWING-IN AND DENTING ↓ LOOMING ↓ LYING-IN ↓ WEAVING

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