I was pleased to be asked to write an article for Etsy.com about the many fine fiber artisans now marketing their handmade fiber creations on Etsy. The article, High End Etsy: Fiber Arts, talks about the "grand opportunity to both emerging and established fiber artisans. Since its inception, Etsy has evolved through layers of quality each in turn attracting buyers at the emerging level.
Truly talented fiber artists – weavers, dyers, textile designers, skilled knitters, art quilters and those reviving traditional fiber crafts in new dimensions – are now establishing shops on Etsy."

Read the article, then browse through the fine work of all the featured artisans. The response has been very positive and the promotion of fiber in this way is great!

Early American Fiber Skills, Part 2,  was written by professional genealogist, Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG. 

Gender Roles

In Europe, weaving was a male occupation. It was learned by apprenticeship, and although a man could be described simply as a weaver or cloth-maker, often the type of material was described in the occupation. I have seen records in England, France, Germany, and Holland referring to linen weavers, woolen weavers, and say makers.

Both women and men were spinners, but weaving was exclusively male. It took several spinners to supply one weaver and his loom. So why do we envision the early American housewife seated at her loom?

With the collapse of the cloth-making industry in Europe, many weavers came to Americafor what they hoped would be economic opportunity. (I don't pretend to be familiar with the specifics of the changes, but one factor was increased cotton production, which caused a decline in the linen industry because cotton could be prepared and woven much more quickly.)

When emigrants arrived, if they were in a rural area and had been lucky enough obtain a farm, the focus had to be on survival, with the priority on accumulating food to make it through the winter. Although self-sufficiency was an ideal in New England, it was less so elsewhere, and New Englanders realized that it was wiser to buy cloth than to invest the time in creating it. Thus, much cloth was purchased. Some was imported from Europe. In American towns and cities, a weaver might still be able to support himself as farms became established and it became practical to raise flax and sheep for linen and wool yarn that could be taken to the weaver to turn into cloth.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich studied this shift in the gender of weavers in a 1998 article (see below). She concluded that weaving as a female occupation developed most fully on the margins of settlement, away from cities, after women were able to shift their attention from helping with tasks related to establishing the farm, crops, and livestock to household activities. Once a loom was properly set up, weaving was an activity that could be started and stopped without interference with other household activities–and a good way to keep teenage girls productively occupied.

I had the opportunity to ask Ulrich if the mechanical improvements such as the fly shuttle were a factor in this gender shift, but she told me that she thought it was entirely the result of economic and social-environment factors.

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Resources
Edwin Tunis's Colonial Living (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1957), 45-52 is illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings of the tools involved in cloth production, beginning to end.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History. The Web site "Do History" provides examples from Martha's diary specifically related to weaving.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, "Wheels, Looms, and the Gender Division of Labor in Eighteenth-Century New England," William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 55(1998): 3-38.

Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG, is an instructor, and professional genealogist. Her oft-migrating ancestors lived in all of the original colonies prior to 1800 and in seventeen other states, presenting her with highly varied research problems and forcing her to acquire techniques and tools that help solve tough problems. She is the author of Producing a Quality Family History.   Copyright 2006, MyFamily.com

Coming next: Part 3: Other Weaving Tasks 

We Americans have the romantic notion that our early ancestors made all their own cloth, then sewed that cloth into clothing for their families. Yes, many did and in the process changed some traditions and methods from the 'old' country.  What follows is an excellent historical account written by professional genealogist, Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG, written in 2006. Part 1 describes the value of weaving and looms and types of fiber found in the early days of our country.

"Early American Fiber Skills"  Patricia Law Hatcher.

Weaving and Linen
It isn't uncommon to find in a probate inventory that an ancestor owned several yards of lining. To understand this term, we first need to remind ourselves that our ancestors didn't care all that much about spelling and that they spoke with accents unlike our present-day American accents .Lining was the most common way of spelling linen. This even gives us a clue of how it was pronounced.

Linen yarn could create a variety of fabrics: from delicate underclothing and fine handkerchiefs to sturdy sheeting and practical outerwear. Linsey woolsey was a common fabric woven from both linen and woolen yarn.

Linen was made from flax. Edwin Tunis in Colonial Living (see below) says of flax, "It took about twenty operations, all laborious, to reduce the plant to a state that would allow its fibers to be spun." In the previous column, we reviewed a Cliff's Notes version of the process for turning flax into linen yarn. (That column is available here.) Spinning added an additional set of operations before weaving could begin. Like preparation and spinning, weaving has many parts.

Looms

A loom was not a simple item. It occupies a significant floor space and has complicated parts. We see references in inventories to gears, slays or sleys, harness, tackle, and other weaving equipment. These could determine the specialty of a specific weaver. In Martha Ballard's diary (see below), we see that some of these pieces–and their installation and set up–were part of the borrow-and-barter economic system.

Warp refers to the sturdy threads that run the full length of a piece of fabric. The warp threads have to be mounted on the loom before weaving can begin. In effect, they go from a roller near the weaver to a roller at the far end of the loom. Periodically, as the warp within reach of the weaver is woven into cloth, warp is unrolled from the far roller (the warp beam) and rolled up on the near roller (the cloth beam). Setting the warp of a loom required both a significant amount of time and specialized skills.

The weft is the thread that alternately passes over and under the warp. The purpose of a loom is to create a mechanical way of alternately raising and lowering particular warp threads so that the weaver can use a shuttle to throw the weft thread from one side to another. Until the invention in 1733 by John Kay of the fly shuttle, the shuttle was thrown by hand from one side of the loom and caught at the other. The fly shuttle automated this process to the pressing of a pedal. The mid-1700s also saw the invention of equipment to facilitate special weaves, such as the Jacquard machine.

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Resources
Edwin Tunis's Colonial Living (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1957), 45-52 is illustrated with pen-and-ink drawings of the tools involved in cloth production, beginning to end.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History. The Web site "Do History" provides examples from Martha's diary specifically related to weaving.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, "Wheels, Looms, and the Gender Division of Labor in Eighteenth-Century New England," William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series 5(1998): 3-38.
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Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG, is an instructor, and professional genealogist. Her oft-migrating ancestors lived in all of the original colonies prior to 1800 and in seventeen other states, presenting her with highly varied research problems and forcing her to acquire techniques and tools that help solve tough problems. She is the author of Producing a Quality Family History.   Copyright 2006, MyFamily.com

Coming next, Gender Roles in fiber production.

Definition of natural fibers: derived from nature, produced by animal or plant; not man-made.

Natural fibers include:

      Wool is produced by many different varieties of sheep, varies from very fine to coarse. Other animal fibers, sometimes referred to as wool, are actually hair fibers, down or fur. Alpaca and cashmere are hair fibers, as is dog, the camel, cats and the yak to name a few. Hair fibers are similar to wool in structure and chemical composition.

      Silk is a natural fiber that is transformed into many yarn types, from very fine and lustrous to a nubby, matt appearance. There is “reeled” silk yarn, spun silk, bombyx and tussah silk.

     Cotton linen, hemp and ramie and offers many different varieties in yarn. Now on the market, we also find yarns made from corn and soy plants.  

      Nature’s bounty does indeed offer knitters and weavers a wide selection of excellent fibers and wool in a huge variety of yarns that are also produced in nature’s palette of colors. When not the desired color, nature also offers a myriad of natural dyes, but that’s another topic.

Bonnie Samuel Design's Blog is about natural fibers, the animals and plants that produce it, and creating with fiber. Fiber and creating with it, has been a great part of my life path and happily, is my business too.

From time to time, this blog will feature other people who create with fiber…the knowledgeable and accomplished weavers, knitters, spinners, mill operators, educators in the field who will enlighten us with their views and insights on fiber and their creations.

Check back soon, sign up for the feed – the first blogpost on fiber will be posted very soon.