50 Fun Facts About Fabrics and Textiles

Angora wool, prized by knitters for its fluffy halo, comes from the coat of which animal?

Rabbit fur, not goat hair, is the source of Angora wool; the similarly named Angora goat produces mohair instead.

Polar fleece, developed in Massachusetts in 1979, can be made from which recycled household items?

Plastic bottles made of PET can be turned into fleece, and Malden Mills chose not to patent its new fabric, so rival makers copied it and it spread quickly and cheaply.

Which fabric pattern is thought to take its name from a nineteenth-century dance craze?

Polka dot fabric became fashionable just as the polka swept dance floors, and many other products of the era borrowed the same name to cash in.

Which word in a phrase for nervous suspense once named the bent nails that stretched wet woollen cloth on a frame?

Tenterhooks pinned newly washed woollen cloth to a wooden frame called a tenter so that it dried without shrinking; fields full of these frames left 'tenter' in many British place names.

Tyrian purple, the dye reserved for Roman emperors by the fourth century, was extracted from which marine animals?

Sea snails of the murex family secrete the pigment in their mucus, and it took tens of thousands of them to make the dye, which is why purple cloth signalled rank.

Which British queen's white satin wedding dress, trimmed with Honiton lace, helped make white fashionable for brides?

Queen Victoria married in 1840, and her order was a boost to Devon's lace-makers; other brides already wore white, but the heavy press coverage of her wedding spread the fashion.

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, which boastful mortal weaver is turned into a spider after a contest with the goddess Minerva?

Arachne hanged herself in shame once the contest was over, and in Ovid's telling Minerva changed her into a spider out of pity, a story told to explain why spiders spin webs.

Linen, the cloth ancient Egyptians used to wrap mummies, is made from the fibres of which plant?

Flax is a demanding crop to grow and process, which helps explain why linen costs so much; the word linen itself is related to linum, the plant's Latin name.

Which English textile workers, who took their name from a legendary weaver called Ned, smashed mill machinery from 1811?

Luddites signed threatening letters to mill owners with the name of Ned Ludd, and the word is now used for anyone who resists new technology.

Which checked cotton fabric is Dorothy Gale's trademark blue-and-white dress made of in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?

Gingham reached Europe in the 17th century as a striped cloth; the checks came later, when English mills began weaving it in blue and white.

Which fibre did DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek develop while searching for a lightweight material to strengthen tyres?

Kevlar is five times stronger than steel for its weight, so it soon moved on from racing tyres into bullet-resistant vests, sails and bicycle tyres.

Which synthetic fibre, first sold as toothbrush bristles in 1938, became a sensation in women's stockings in 1940?

Nylon stockings sold 64 million pairs in their first year, before almost all wartime production was diverted to parachutes and parachute cord.

Which stretchy synthetic fibre, invented at DuPont in 1958, was developed to replace the rubber in women's girdles?

Spandex is the name preferred in North America; in Britain, Australia and much of Latin America the same fibre is better known as Lycra, after a brand.

The silkworm, whose cocoons are unravelled to make silk, feeds almost exclusively on the leaves of which tree?

Mulberry leaves are the silkworm's only real diet, and it takes more than 100 kg of them to produce a single kilogram of raw silk.

Which leader of India's freedom struggle championed khadi, a coarse cloth spun and woven entirely by hand?

Mahatma Gandhi urged Indians to spin and weave their own khadi instead of buying British mill cloth, and the spinning wheel became an emblem of the independence movement.

Which American inventor patented a cotton gin in 1794 that pulled the fibres from their seeds using wire hooks?

Eli Whitney hoped his gin would cut the labour that cotton required, but it made picking the slow step and so increased the demand for workers to harvest the crop.

Which reinforcement did tailor Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss patent in 1873 to strengthen the pockets of work trousers?

Copper rivets on the pocket seams turned miners' work trousers into blue jeans, which Marlon Brando and James Dean later made a symbol of teenage rebellion.

Which Paris couturier built her early success on jersey, a humble knit then used mainly for men's underwear?

Coco Chanel first bought jersey because it was cheap, while rival designers avoided a knit they found hard to handle; she kept using it long after money stopped being a worry.

Despite its name, the Bayeux Tapestry showing the Norman conquest of England is technically which kind of needlework?

Embroidery is the right word because the scenes are stitched onto the cloth rather than woven into it, along a strip nearly 70 metres long.

Which figure on bedsheet packaging did US regulators warn in 2005 could mislead shoppers when makers inflate it?

Thread count adds up the lengthwise and crosswise yarns in a square inch, and makers inflate it by counting every strand of a twisted yarn separately.

The word denim is a contraction of a French phrase meaning 'serge from' which city?

Nîmes gave denim its name, while the word jeans comes from Gênes, the French name for Genoa, where a similar hard-wearing cloth was traded.

Which dye, once extracted from a plant grown across the Indian subcontinent, gives blue jeans their colour?

Indigo is applied only to the lengthwise yarns of denim while the crosswise ones stay white, which is why jeans are blue on the outside and pale on the inside.

Which colour was the dye that 18-year-old William Perkin discovered by accident in 1856 while trying to make quinine?

Mauve turned up in a black sludge that looked like a failed experiment; Perkin noticed purple traces while cleaning the flask with alcohol and went on to make his name in dyes.

Which red dye, once used to colour British soldiers' coats, is made from dried insects that live on prickly pear cacti?

Cochineal was a Spanish and Portuguese monopoly from the New World, and it lives on as carmine, the colouring in many foods and lipsticks.

Which teardrop-shaped pattern of Persian origin takes its English name from a textile town in the west of Scotland?

Paisley became the pattern's name because the town's weavers reproduced the designs of prized shawls imported from Kashmir, using Jacquard looms to do it.

Which patterned cloth, linked to Scottish clans, was banned for about two generations after the Jacobite rising of 1745?

Tartan was caught by the Dress Act of 1746, which outlawed Highland dress for men and boys but made an exception for the army's Highland regiments.

By law, genuine Harris tweed must be handwoven by islanders in their own homes in which Scottish island group?

The Outer Hebrides are also where the wool has to be dyed, spun and finished, and a 1993 Act of Parliament set up an authority to guard the name.

Which reversible patterned fabric is named after the Syrian capital, a great trading centre on the Silk Road?

Damask was originally made entirely of silk; the name now covers any fabric with a pattern woven to show on both sides, and it is seen at its best in cotton and linen.

Which fine cotton cloth, woven around Dhaka so sheer it was compared to glass, is commonly said to be named after Mosul?

Muslin from Mughal Bengal led world exports of the cloth in the 17th and 18th centuries, with Dhaka as the capital of the worldwide trade.

Which cloth, used by Central Asian nomads to cover yurts, is made by matting and pressing wool instead of weaving?

Felt made from wool is one of the oldest known textiles, and nomadic peoples such as the Mongols still make rugs, tents and clothing from it.

Which weave, recognised by its parallel diagonal ribs, is used for both denim and chino cloth?

Twill hides soiling and stains better than a smooth plain weave, which is why it became a standard choice for sturdy work clothing and durable upholstery.

On a loom, which set of yarns is held stationary under tension while the weft is passed over and under it?

Warp yarns run the full length of a finished cloth and are pulled tighter during weaving, which is why most woven fabric stretches less lengthwise than across.

What name do weavers and tailors give to the raised vertical ridges that run down a length of corduroy?

Wales are numbered per inch to grade the cloth: the lower the figure, the chunkier the cord, while the finest pincord packs in more than 16.

What do sewists call the tightly finished border along a woven fabric that stops it from fraying?

Selvage, spelled selvedge in Britain, forms where the crosswise yarn loops back at the end of each row, so the edge needs no hem to keep it intact.

Dressmakers who cut cloth diagonally across the weave, so that it stretches and drapes softly, are cutting on the what?

Bias cutting dominated 1930s couture after Madeleine Vionnet became the first designer to cut entire garments that way, where others had used it only for trims.

Which unit of yarn fineness, defined as grams per 9,000 metres, is named after a medieval French coin?

Denier is the unit American makers favour, while Canada and continental Europe more often use tex; the lower the number, the finer and sheerer the yarn.

Which wax, secreted by sheep to help their coats shed water, is refined for use in skin creams and cosmetics?

Lanolin is also called wool grease or wool wax, and its name simply joins the Latin words for wool and oil.

Which fine-woolled sheep breed did Spain guard as a monopoly for centuries, threatening exporters with death?

Merino wool was judged the equal of the finest English wools by the mid-16th century, and the breed later spread to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Which word do cotton traders use for fibre length, as in the 'extra-long' grade of Egyptian and Pima cotton?

Staple fibres come in separate short lengths, unlike a continuous filament, and the longer ones spin into stronger, more regular yarn of superior quality.

Which wild Andean relative of the llama yields a costly wool that only Inca royalty were allowed to wear?

Vicuña wool is so expensive because the animals have to be caught from the wild and can be shorn only every three years; the species is the national animal of Peru.

Rayon, sold as 'artificial silk' when it first appeared, is manufactured mainly from which raw material?

Wood pulp supplies the cellulose, which is dissolved and re-formed as fibre, so rayon is classed as semi-synthetic: man-made, yet with the same molecular structure as a plant's cellulose.

Which waterproof yet breathable outdoor fabric is a membrane of stretched PTFE, discovered by a happy accident in 1969?

Gore-Tex exists because a frustrated Bob Gore gave a heated rod of PTFE a sudden yank instead of stretching it slowly, and it expanded by about 800% into a structure that was mostly air.

The Jacquard loom of 1804 wove intricate patterns automatically using which system, later borrowed by Charles Babbage?

Punched cards laced into a chain controlled the loom, one card for each row of the design, and Babbage planned to store programs the same way in his Analytical Engine.

Which machine, invented by James Hargreaves in Lancashire in the 1760s, let one worker run eight or more spools at once?

Spinning jenny frames answered a shortage created by the flying shuttle, which had doubled weavers' output and left hand spinners unable to make yarn fast enough.

Which puckered cotton fabric for hot weather takes its name from Persian words meaning 'milk and sugar'?

Seersucker was named for its alternating smooth and gritty stripes; the bumpy ones are made by feeding some yarns into the loom faster than their neighbours.

Which Ghanaian cloth, hand-woven in strips of silk and cotton, was traditionally worn toga-style by the Asante and Ewe?

Kente takes its name from an Asante word for basket, after its basket-like pattern, and folklore says the first weavers were copying the patterns of Anansi the spider.

Which wax-resist dyeing technique did UNESCO recognise in 2009 as part of Indonesia's cultural heritage?

Batik is made by drawing or stamping wax onto cloth so the dye cannot reach those areas, and repeating the cycle builds up intricate patterns in several colours.

Which coarse jute sacking, known as burlap in North America, shares its British name with soldiers from a German state?

Hessian is said to owe its name to troops from Hesse, whose uniforms used the cloth; the origin of the American word burlap is uncertain.

Which Byzantine emperor backed the two monks who smuggled living silkworms out of China in the mid-sixth century?

Justinian I had already failed to open new trade routes for silk, and the smuggled worms founded a Byzantine industry that long held a monopoly on it in Europe.

Which fuzzy yarn, believed to have originated in 18th-century France, is named after the French word for caterpillar?

Chenille was first made by weaving a cloth and then cutting it into strips, and the furry yarn that resulted was thought to resemble the insect.