Friday 27 September 2013

How to make cactus silk threads?

I found a site where you can find the method how Moroccan people make the cactus silk thread. This is the link:

http://craftsoftheworldonline.blogspot.com/2013/01/vegetable-silk-also-known-as-sabra.html

They have a webshop, too, where you can find some items of cactus silk.

"Also known as Cactus silk, Sabra silk is a natural fiber harvested from sustainable sources of Saharan Aloe Vera Cactus (the Aloe Vera plant being part of the Agave family).
The fabric is a 100% vegetable silk blend of extracted filaments from the aloe cactus grown in Morocco. It is sought for its quality, strength and beauty since millennia. The process to produce sabra silk has not changed for centuries. Once the Cactus plant is collected from the long agave plants, the long spiky leaves are crushed and the fibres washed and hammered, then the leaves are soaked in water to separate the fibres & filaments and then these are spun and woven to make "silk thread" which are then dyed in different colours. The textile produced has a high elasticity and this makes Sabra-Silk free of wrinkles.
You might have come across - when walking through the narrow lanes of the Medina in Marrakech –men threading fine, almost invisible, fibers on spools. These are then twisted into thread by small battery powered twisters and tacked along the walls of the medina while they were being created. The colourful threads of the cactus silk are then sold in spools."
 

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