Embroidery is the art of decorating fabric or other materials using a needle to stitch thread or yarn. Embroidery may also incorporate other materials such as pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. In modern days, embroidery is usually seen on hats, clothing, blankets, and handbags. Embroidery is available in a wide variety of thread or yarn colour. It is often used to personalize gifts or clothing items.
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the only manufacturing method, and many other methods were later developed to form textile structures based on their intended use. Knitting and non-woven are other popular types of fabric manufacturing. In the contemporary world, textiles satisfy the material needs for versatile applications, from simple daily clothing to bulletproof jackets, spacesuits, and doctor's gowns.
Crewel embroidery, or crewelwork, is a type of surface embroidery using wool. A wide variety of different embroidery stitches are used to follow a design outline applied to the fabric. The technique is at least a thousand years old.
Fustian is a variety of heavy cloth woven from cotton, chiefly prepared for menswear.
Dowlas was a strong coarse linen cloth of the 16th and 17th centuries, and initially, it was manufactured in Brittany. In the 18th century the fabric was also produced in England and Scotland. Dowlas was identical to sailcloth. The cloth was also imitated in cotton for the same use.
Linsey-woolsey is a coarse twill or plain-woven fabric woven with a linen warp and a woollen weft. Similar fabrics woven with a cotton warp and woollen weft in Colonial America were also called linsey-woolsey or wincey. The name derives from a combination of lin and wool. This textile has been known since ancient times. Known as shatnez (שַׁעַטְנֵז) in Hebrew, the wearing of this fabric was forbidden in the Torah and hence Jewish law.
Broadcloth is a dense, plain woven cloth, historically made of wool. The defining characteristic of broadcloth is not its finished width but the fact that it was woven much wider and then heavily milled in order to shrink it to the required width. The effect of the milling process is to draw the yarns much closer together than could be achieved in the loom and allow the individual fibres of the wool to bind together in a felting process, which results in a dense, blind face cloth with a stiff drape which is highly weather-resistant, hard wearing and capable of taking a cut edge without the need for being hemmed.
In the context of materials, stuff can refer to any manufactured material. This is illustrated from a quote by Sir Francis Bacon in his 1658 publication New Atlantis: "Wee have also diverse Mechanicall Arts, which you have not; And Stuffes made by them; As Papers, Linnen, Silks, Tissues; dainty Works of Feathers of wonderfull Lustre; excellent Dies, and many others." In Coventry, those completing seven-year apprenticeships with stuff merchants were entitled to become freemen of the city.
Kersey is a kind of coarse woollen cloth that was an important component of the textile trade in Medieval England.
The manufacture of textiles is one of the oldest of human technologies. To make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fiber from which a yarn can be made, primarily by spinning. The yarn is processed by knitting or weaving, which turns yarn into cloth. The machine used for weaving is the loom. For decoration, the process of colouring yarn or the finished material is dyeing. For more information of the various steps, see textile manufacturing.
Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in coloured silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian broccato meaning "embossed cloth", originally past participle of the verb broccare "to stud, set with nails", from brocco, "small nail", from Latin broccus, "projecting, pointed".
Embroidery thread is yarn that is manufactured or hand-spun specifically for embroidery and other forms of needlework. Embroidery thread often differs widely, coming in many different fiber types, colors and weights.
A bleachfield or bleaching green was an open area used for spreading cloth on the ground to be purified and whitened by the action of the sunlight. Bleaching fields were usually found in and around mill towns in Great Britain and were an integral part of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution.
Primarily, nap is the raised (fuzzy) surface on certain kinds of cloth, such as velvet or moleskin. Nap can refer additionally to other surfaces that look like the surface of a napped cloth, such as the surface of a felt or beaver hat.
A bunting is any festive decorations made of fabric, or of plastic, paper or cardboard in imitation of fabric. Typical forms of buntings are strings of colorful, monochrome, beige triangular flags and lengths of fabric in the colors of national flags gathered and draped into swags or pleated into fan shapes.
English embroidery includes embroidery worked in England or by English people abroad from Anglo-Saxon times to the present day. The oldest surviving English embroideries include items from the early 10th century preserved in Durham Cathedral and the 11th century Bayeux Tapestry, if it was worked in England. The professional workshops of Medieval England created rich embroidery in metal thread and silk for ecclesiastical and secular uses. This style was called Opus Anglicanum or "English work", and was famous throughout Europe.
Mockado is a woollen pile fabric made in imitation of silk velvet from the mid-sixteenth century. Mockado was usually constructed with a woollen pile on a linen or worsted wool warp and woollen weft, although the ground fabric could be any combination of wool, linen, and silk. Mockado was used for furnishings and carpeting, and also for clothing such as doublets, farthingales, and kirtles.
Turkeywork is a knotted-and-cut pile furnishing textile produced in England from the sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. Turkeywork was used for table carpets, cupboard carpets, cushions, and especially for matched sets of upholstery for chair seats and backs.
Bed hangings or bed curtains are fabric panels that surround a bed; they were used from medieval times through to the 19th century. Bed hangings provided privacy when the master or great bed was in a public room, such as the parlor. They also kept warmth in, and were a way of showing one's wealth. When bedrooms became more common in the mid-1700s, the use of bed hangings diminished.
A blend is a mixture of two or more fibers. In yarn spinning, different compositions, lengths, diameters, or colors may be combined to create a blend. Blended textiles are fabrics or yarns produced with a combination of two or more types of different fibers, or yarns to obtain desired traits and aesthetics. Blending is possible at various stages of textile manufacturing. The term, blend, refers to spun fibers or a fabric composed of such fibers. There are several synonymous terms: a combination yarn is made up of two strands of different fibers twisted together to form a ply; a mixture or mixed cloth refers to blended cloths in which different types of yarns are used in warp and weft sides.
