The deafening sounds of cloth

Woven cloth, like that shirt you're wearing now or those pants, dates back to when men were fastening tools from rocks. That's right 2.5 million years ago in the Paleolithic Age someone though hey if I take this fiber and face it in rows towards me, today called warping threads, and then take these ones and move them in between these ones, referred today as the wafting thread,  I create on big piece of fabric.

Wall looms, table looms, floor looms, card looms, and the list goes on created cloths distinctive to the eras, cultures, families, and fibers that created them. In some areas flax becoming linen was popular,  wool rule the economy in others, cotton became king not only in the South but also in the 1800s, and where silk is concerned it has not only been a rich expensive cloth but is very distinctive cloth to a culture, era, and creature that makes them.

In the earliest days of cloth leather was cheap. Partly because it was so easy to make compared to the steps needed to make woven or knitted cloth and partly because animals was available around the word. After that it would depend on your location the resources around you. In England and most of Europe linen and wool were cheapest, in China silk, in India cotton, and so on. eventually the cloth is going to depend not on the labor though but the actual cost of making the fabric. Buy 1800's cloth moves from a male trade and hand woven into the industrial era.

   
At the front of this era is England. Shortly after that the United States in Lowell, Massachusetts. As the sound of the industrial era begins, and the sight of the mill girls arrives and talk on the streets is cheap cloth. Cotton cloth, wool cloth, linen cloth and other natural fibers become cheaper as it is moved from hand woven cloth to industrial machines. At the center of this is Lowell,  and a good percent of town near rivers in Massachusetts.

So here's to cloth, the traditions behind it, the meanings, the colors and the protection it provides.