From Flax Bundle to Finished Seam: Nine Textile Tools

The distaff holds a bundle of unspun fiber, traditionally flax or wool, tied on with ribbon or string so it stays untangled while the spinner draws it off. The staff form used with a handheld spindle is the older of the two Western forms, because spindle spinning came before the wheel.

Every warp thread on a loom passes through a heddle, which separates the warp to open a passage for the weft. A handwoven tea towel typically needs 300 to 400 of them, and how the threads are spread across the shafts decides weaves such as plain weave or twill.

The reed is a comb-like frame that spaces the warp threads and pushes each thrown weft into place. Early reeds were split cane, and John Kay replaced the cane with flattened iron or brass wire in 1738, a change that was quickly adopted.

Weaving draws cloth narrower as the weft interlaces, and the temple counters this by holding the fabric at a fixed width with prongs at each edge. Wooden temples have fine straight teeth, while metal ones have wider angled teeth for gripping heavy cloth such as rugs.

The shuttle carries the weft back and forth through the shed between raised and lowered warp threads. The simplest form is a notched stick, and the mechanized flying shuttle received a patent from John Kay in 1733.

A bobbin stores thread and feeds it to textile work, and it carries the lower thread in a lockstitch sewing machine. The lockstitch, invented and developed in the 18th and 19th centuries, joins a needle thread with a thread from the bobbin.

The sewing needle has a pointed tip and an eye for the thread, and the earliest examples were bone or wood. A point that might be from a bone needle dates to 61,000 years ago at Sibudu Cave in South Africa, and high-quality steel needle making reached Spain from China in the tenth century.

The thimble is a pitted cap worn on a fingertip to push a needle through cloth. Medieval thimbles were cast or hammered brass, and early production centered on brass-working places, beginning with Nuremberg in the 15th century and moving to Holland by the 17th.

The seam ripper cuts and removes stitches, so a sewer can pull a seam apart and sew it again. It is unclear when the modern tool was invented, though an 1898 patent already uses the name and claims an improvement on the tool then in standard use.