Cotton and silk in handmade carpet weaving
From the very beginning, nomadic carpet weavers saw no reason to use synthetic fibers to weave carpets. For this reason, old and original Iranian carpets were always woven with natural yarns, wool, cotton and silk.
The base of the bed on which the carpet is woven, the weft and the yarn used to weave the carpet are called lint. In some carpets, lint is placed long and thick, and in some carpets, it is shortened to make the carpet look more visible. Carpet weaving is usually done with wool, cotton or silk and sometimes a combination of two types of yarn. Cotton, wool and silk are used for carpet weaving. Goat or camel hair is also used for background texture. Carpet weaving is also called infrastructure. The threads of the background fabric are tied on a string, made of warp and weft.
Cotton is a relatively strong leaf that is mainly composed of cellulose and is one of the main factors in the texture of carpets and one of the major materials of plant weaving with plant origin. Qazvin, Yazd, Khorasan, and the Turkmen, Gilan, and Mazandaran plains are cultivated, and in cotton and cotton mills, which are mostly found in Gorgan and the Kavous dome, they are turned into cotton yarn.
Cotton fibers have a variety of uses and are used in textile industries such as textiles, kilims, carpets, rugs, and other types of carpets. Cotton is a precious product of special economic importance to the extent that it is known as white gold. There are different types depending on the breeding environment and climatic conditions. Its fibers are made of cellulose, which is available in white, brown, yellow, and gray, varying in length and diameter, but the best is white cotton. In the art of cotton carpet, it is used as a raw material for making thread and weft yarn.
Cotton, like wool, loses its durability due to wear, moisture, and air impact. It has less traction than wool and is therefore better than wool for Taropod. In general, it is high quality cotton that has long fibers. (7-3 cm) Its fiber diameter should be low between (7-12) microns. Its color is white, yellow, gray and clear, and it also contains a few dead fibers.
After picking the cotton, the cotton is removed from the pot in the cleaning cotton factories, and after the soldering and washing operations, the cotton is spinned and turned into yarn.
Silk is a type of protein sheet (about 98% of the weight of silk is made up of protein), which is obtained from silkworm cocoons, which are soft, transparent, delicate and strong. The silkworm secretes these fibers during its transformation from its salivary glands. These fibers together form the cocoon. To obtain fiber, the cocoons are heated to 60 degrees Celsius before the worm leaves the cocoon so that the worm dies, and silk fibers can be used. For every 250 kg of cocoon, about 20 kg of raw silk is obtained.
Silkworms are bred in the regions of Gilan and Khorasan and silk is used as a weed. The texture of silk carpets requires skill and expertise, and currently these types of carpets are mostly woven in the cities of Isfahan, Qom, Nain, Kashan and Tabriz.
