Weaving Fair Trade and Silk

Fair Trade products are made from a variety of materials.  Whether it is cotton, burlap, wood, stone, or even recycled items, the materials have to come from somewhere, and the people who create or harvest those materials deserve fair treatment for their labor just as the artisans do.

And so it is with silk.  There is actually a long and involved process before silk scarves can be made.  We know silk to be the soft and colorful scarves we wear in the summer, or the sturdy and cozy material we use for bedsheets, but the cloth we know as silk is actually a product of skill and thousands of years of east Asian tradition.

Silk is a thread made from the cocoons of silk moths.  But before those cocoons must be made, the silk worm must feed on lots and lots of mulberry leaves.  This and and lots of fresh air is necessary for the silk worms to stay healthy, otherwise they could get sick and their silk will be of low quality.  When the worm is ready it will spin a silk cocoon around itself which will take about two days to complete.  Humans have been harvesting silk moth cocoons for 5000 years, so long that the insects are now completely dependent upon man because of such selective breeding, and have lost the ability to fly.  There are many species of silk worm. The white is preferred because of its higher production rates, but other kinds such as the yellow silk worm are primarily found in places like Cambodia.  

After the cocoons have been harvested they are boiled to soften the fibers, then the worms are removed and the cocoons stretched and spun into thread.  It is this thread that is dyed and woven into the high quality products we enjoy so much!