The road to the silk

Though the most famous silk producers in the world considered to be China and Japan, Thailand has a big part in the industry as well, mainly due to the early efforts (back in the 60s) of Jim Thompson, American businessman, who was the first one to introduce Thai silk to the international market. Jim Thompson silk industry still stays the leading silk trademark in Thailand, but along with it you can frequently see independent silk villages spread around the country producing the silk on the macro and micro level and delivering its processing secrets to us.
So here we were at the silk village in Chiang Mai watching and learning the fascinating stuff from the women dressed in traditional sarongs like back in a days....
Silk production turned to be a very scrupulous and complex task, evolving multiple stages of growing and breeding the worms, preparing and extracting fibers, washing, drying, twisting and finally creating.. Most of it is a human hand work, excluding technology or electric machinery.

So here it is, the SILK WORM, which after being emerged from the egg, feeds from the mulberry tree leaves:




over time it spins a protective cocoon around itself so it can transform into chrysalis:
at this stage the chrysalis emerges from the cocoon as a moth:
the moths mate, and the female moth lays about 300-400 eggs. Few days later the moths die, but the life cycle continues. then the cocoons are being placed to boil in a hot water to release the sericin (the gum that practically glues the fiber into a cocoon) from the fibers.

then the threads are being extracted from the cocoon and reeled to a wheel,whereas one cocoon can produce about 1500-2000F of silk filament.
after the silk is washed and dried with soap it is being twisted to create a thread, the twist pattern and the quality determines the quality of the fabric.

after the thread is ready the fabric can be made:

usually, about 3000 cocoons will be used to produce 1 yard of fabric.

and this is what u get in the end:


this was a fascinating and exiting process to see and now we definitely appreciate Thai Silk!!