Making Things in the Mill

Making Things in the Mill. Textiles. Making textiles from raw cotton required several steps. Each step was done in its own location in the mill, using different machinery and workers., (captions) , 1849 Botanical print of a cotton plant, Lapping Cotton came lo the mil the seeds already removed. The lapping machine cleaned the fibers and rolled them into wide, loose blankets called laps., Carding The laps were placed into a carding machine where cylinders of hooked wire combed out the fibers into long fluffy slivers. Carding was labor intensive, with the laps being fed in on one end and the continuous roll of sliver feeding out the other., Drawing In the drawing process six or more slivers were pulled and tristed together to make a strong strand, then turned onto a short wooden roving bobbin. As the cans emptied the operator had to have more full cans ready while another worker removed the filled roving bobbins., Spinning The spinning frame woud twist strands from two roving bobbins into thread. Turning spindles would wind the thread onto spools All day long the spinners tied knots, connecting the many bobbins of roving into long continuous threads. Child laborers sat under the dusty, noisy machines to catch broken threads and hand them up to the spinners.