How is Thai Silk Made?

Want to know how Thai silk is made? Check this out as the process is very surprising. Great information for everyone interested in the silk industry and very helpful for kids school project material.

As you probably know from your schooldays, the raw silk material is a natural product of the silkworm, which is a type of moth that feeds on the foliage of the mulberry tree.

The Complex Thai Silk Making Process

• The silkworms, which are really caterpillars, are grown primarily in the country's northeast region and our silk thread is a natural light gold color. This process is called "sericulture."

• The most valuable silk yarn is obtained from a silkworm that comes from the Bombyx mori moth.
• This moth can neither see or fly but it has a singular, very important job and that is to lay the eggs for the next generation of silkworms.
• The silk cocoons consists of one thread that can be as long as 500 or 600 yards and these threads are boiled to remove the glue-like material left over from the cocoons.
• Actually many of the ladies in our Thai Silk Magic weaver’s group love to eat the glue-like or pupa material removed from the silk thread (although I have not tried it myself, my grandmother told me that it is very nutritious and takes a little like corn).
• Each thread is too thin to use alone so many threads are combined to make a thicker, more workable fiber.
• Our Thai silk is yarn dyed and therefore it has to be processed by hand by the lady weavers.
• The raw silk yarn is then soaked in grandma’s secret tree bark, wild flowers, mountain grasses and vegetable natural dyes before being washed again, stretched and then put through a final dying process.
• After the final dyeing and drying, the threads are wound onto wooden spindles and this is also a very time consuming process. A lovely group of our grandmothers specialise in this task and it will often take 2 or 3 days to reel about 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs) of silk.

However, once this part of the Thai silk making process is completed, we are ready to weave and create our unique Thai silk fabrics. 

Traditional Hand Weaving

Our village traditional weaving is a slow and long “labor of love” process, The ladies operating their hand looms can only produce about two yards of Thai silk fabric in a single day, if they are very experienced and skilled in their craft.