From Cotton to Spun Yarn
We get all of our cotton directly from the source from cotton growers and ginners in a sustainable and responsible way.
Opening and cleaning is the first step in preparing the cotton to be made into yarn. Highly compressed bales come with some leaf particles from the cotton plant. The Top feeder then picks off a layer of fibre and feeds it to the cleaning machine, which opens, blends and fluffs the fibre.
During the carding process, the cotton is further cleaned and aligned, the weight kept as a constant. A mat of fibre is fed into the card. The metallic wire covered cylinders parallel the fibres. A very thin layer of fibre called a web is carefully removed from the cylinder and condensed into a fragile rope called a sliver.
Slivers continue onto the drawing process which blends slivers together for better weight uniformity. Six strands of card sliver are combined to produce one strand of drawing sliver. The process further straightens the fibres ready for the roving process.
The roving process drafts the drawn sliver into a smaller and finer form that will fit on a spinning frame. For every inch of drawing sliver fed, four inches of roving are produced.
Ring Spinning uses a robotic conveyor that moves the finished bobbins to the next process untouched by human hands. The roving is further drafted and twisted, taking the shape of thread, which is referred to as yarn. Special computerised attachments on the spinning frame allow us to add thick places or slubs to the yarn to create a vintage denim appearance.
