We had some visitors, six wonderful girls from Scotland and one wild one from South Africa (you know who you are!), and I took them to one, well two, of our local silk factories. Our area is known for its silk. The first one we went to had an impressive showroom (or so we thought). Their factory was tiny, and the power was out. The second factory, now that is a silk factory! And the showroom, which will have to have a blog post all for itself, well, you just wait until you see it.
When we arrived at the second factory, they immediately provided two guides for us. Apparently, they have had visitors before. I wasn't expecting them to be prepared for guests. The ladies took us back to see a place where they had a bunch of trees, like a mini tree farm, that they said are from China. At that time I wasn't too impressed, because I wanted to see the worms. I didn't realize that the fact that they had special leaves was important. Therefore, I did not take any pictures.
After I asked to see the worms, they took us to a little room that had a bunch of trays with leaves and worms of various sizes on them.
(I don't know why the next picture won't rotate, right.) I also took a close up of one of the worms, but I'll save you from that not-so-beautiful sight.
They also had trays with just the cocoons on them. Apparently, some of them they let hatch so they continue to have a supply of worms, but some of them they take to make the silk fabric.
I think these cocoons are left to sit and will provide the next batch of worms.
Across a walkway from the room where all the worms and their cocoons are, is the room where factory begins collecting the silk fibers. They boil the cocoons, and then these ladies gently pull the fibers and attach them to a machine that organizes them together.
They make bundles like this.
These are then taken to the bigger factory room where it is VERY, VERY noisy and there are tons of machines. I think the string is taken from these bundles and put on spools. You may at this point be wondering why there is yellow and white string. We wondered that, too. They have both colors of cocoons, and they just said they produce different quality silk.
The silk threads are then woven into fabric.
The fabric is then washed.
Then it's dyed.
After that, I'm sure it's dried somewhere. And then it's ironed. Look at those piles of silk just laying on the floor!
After that the fabric is decorated. Upstairs at the factory is where they paint designs on. While we were visiting, they were just putting wax on the fabric to prepare it for paint.
Here's a sari that has been prepared.
And these are head scarfs being prepared for paint.
In another room, closer to where the worms were, these men did detailed beading work on saris. They said it takes them about a week (6 days of 8 hour work days) to finish a sari.
In another room women were stitching on saris. They said for a fancy sari like this, it takes one month to three months to finish the stitching. No wonder saris that have stitching like this are so expensive!
I thought it was interesting to see the jobs that men did versus the jobs that women did. I asked quite a few people what their salaries are (that's not a rude question here), and they all earned around $22/month for working 6 days a week and 6-8 hours a day.
We were impressed by the factory, but we were blown away by the show room. But, like I said, that will be another post. I certainly think this post is already long enough.
I'm not even including photos of every room in the showroom. Tons of stuff! And this place is kind of in the middle of nowhere. If I had been in a big shopping center, this would not have been so surprising.
And more scarves...
