Step 1: You’ll
need a clean, warm environment, plenty of mulberry leaves, and lots of silkworm
eggs. Silkworms are caterpillars (larvae) of the white silk moth, Bombyx Mori.
Step 2: The eggs
will hatch in about a week. You will need to feed the larvae three times a day
on chopped mulberry leaves – they’re fussy eaters and won't touch anything
else. They grow very fast.
Step 3: After 25
days, they are ready to spin cocoons. Each silkworm spins around 1.6Km of silk
filaments from tiny openings in its head. The silk comes out as a liquid and
hardens on contact with the air.
Step 4: When the
silkworm is completely enclosed in a cocoon, free the outside end of the
filaments and start winding them onto a reel, twisting several filaments
together to form yarn.
Step 5: Each
cocoon will produce approximately 3650m of yarn. After it has been carefully
dried and graded, the raw silk yarn can be dyed various colours, ready for
weaving into silk cloth.
Silky fact: More
than 50 per cent of the world’s silk comes from China and Japan. The Chinese
learned how to make silk 3000 years ago but kept it a closely guarded secret
for centuries. The Romans, who imported Chinese silk, thought it grew on trees!
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