The manufacture of textiles is one of the oldest of man's technologies. In order to make textiles, the first requirement is a source of fibre 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.

Fibre and yarn

Carding

Spinning

Knitting

Weaving

Loom

The earliest weaving was done without a loom, but in general the supporting structure of the loom is called the frame.

The frame provides the means of fixing the lengthwise threads, called the warp, and keeping them under tension. When producing a long piece of material, the warp threads are wound on a roller called a beam, and attached to the cloth beam which will serve to hold the finished material. Because of the tension the warp threads are under, they need to be strong, and the strengthening process (using flour and water paste) was called dressing. The warp was originally made of flax (linen) until the spinning process was refined enough to provide strong cotton yarn.

The thread that is woven through the warp is called the weft or woof. The weft is threaded through the warp using a shuttle, which carries the weft through separated warp threads. The original hand-loom was limited in width by the weaver's reach, because of the need to throw the shuttle from hand to hand. The invention of the flying shuttle with its fly cord and picking sticks enabled the weaver to pass the shuttle from a box at either side of the loom with one hand, and across a greater width. The invention of the drop box allowed a weaver to use multiple shuttles to carry different wefts.

With the hand freed by the use of the flying shuttle, the weaver can operate the lathe suspended from the frame. The lathe holds the reed comb used to beat (compact) the woven weft.

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Rather than having to lift each thread individually, alternate threads can be separated by introducing a bar between the threads: the gap created is called the shed. While an inserted bar only presents one orientation, alternating sets of threads can be lifted by connecting them with string or wires called heddles to another bar, called the shaft (or heddle bar or heald). Heddles, shafts and the couper (lever to lift the assembly) are called the harness — the harness provides for mechanical operation using foot- or hand-operated treadles. (Multiple harnesses can be used, connected to different sets of warp threads in a draw-loom.)

Sleying is the process of threading the warp yarn through the reed. Usually one speaks of "sleying the reed". You set (verb) the warp at X ends per inch and then you can say that its sett (noun) is X ends per inch.

Dyeing