One Of the oldest products of the World ...
The history of sewing threads has begun in very early times – about 60 million years ago, in the Tertiary period – with the linen fibre. This is the oldest known textile fibre in the history of the Earth. The history of sewing and embroidery threads originates in textile raw materials and in parallel is closely connected with the development of sewing and embroidering machines. From the time of the New Stone Age on, i.e. from 4600 to 2000 B.C., an overview of the stages of history from the fibre to the sewing and embroidery thread including manufacturing technologies is provided as follows:
17500 B.C.
The invention of the needle eye marked the beginning of the history of sewing threads and embroidery. The needles were made of bones, horn, ivory or fish bones and the eye of the needle was pierced by fine flint stone fragments into the splinters.
4600 – 2000 B.C.
At that time threads were spun by means of so-called „spindles“. With a hand spindle of 500-2500 turns to stillstand a spinning girl in the New Stone Age could produce more or less than 20 g per hour. “Production material” was mostly linen, also sheep wool was used later on. By the way, also nowadays the strenuous method of working with a hand spindle is still used – in the same way as in former times, however, slightly improved - by indigenous peoples and even in some remote areas of Europe.
2500 B.C.
The first tools of bronze appeared in the Eastern Mediterranean countries, in particular in Crete and in Egypt. Soon afterwards the first bronze needles were applied.
1600 – 1100 B.C.
The invention and development of the embroidery art is ascribed to the former civilised peoples of the Ancient Near East. The robes as well as the textile interior design of the Babylonians and the Assyrians were already ornamented with artful embroideries and applications at that time. Some time later this decoration was highly appreciated in Egypt and Persia. The art of whitework in ancient Egypt is worth mentioning, decorating the pleated robes of byssus of the Pharaohs.
440 B.C.
“The plant on which wool is growing instead of fruit“, Herodot wrote when the news concerning cotton finally came to Europe.
350 B.C.
It was in China where the technique for the spinning and producing of silk was developed for the first time. It is said that in the middle of the fourth century B.C. the spouse of the Emperor Hoang-ti, named Se-ling-schi, succeeded in spinning noble shiny long threads out of a cocoon. She invented a method to gain large quantities of cocoons for the spinning of silk. Se-ling-shi became the patroness and goddess of silk worms. At first, the breed of these belonged to the tasks of the empresses of China.
138 B.C.
King Attalus III of Pergamon brought the Greek goldwork to Rome.
300 AD
Until the fourth century AD the Chinese succeeded in keeping the breeding of silk worms as a secret. In the year 552 AD two monks founded the well-known Byzantine silk weaving mills (nowadays: Istanbul) after having brought the eggs of mulberry spinners in their hollow walking sticks to Constantinople. The Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I immediately was aware of the immense trade value. In 553 AD the silk industry became the government monopoly of the Eastern Roman Empire. 20 years before that time the silverwork was already introduced under his rule, in keen competition with the sophisticated Phrygian embroidery.
4th – 5th Century AD
Due to the wide-spread commercial settlements of the Arabs cotton became generally known rapidly in Europe. The Greeks and Romans soon acquired sufficient knowledge of processing cotton. In addition, the Romans were already working with a spinning and twisting wheel.
1037 AD
The oldest exemplar of medieval sacral embroidery is the coronation mantle of St. Stephan of Hungary dating from the year 1031. It is richly embroidered in the Byzantine style and is exposed in the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest.
14th Century
Cotton found its way to the areas of Augsburg, Ulm, Basel and Bruges; step by step also the spinning and twisting wheel was established throughout Europe.
15th Century
In Italy from the filigree work with white threads on white linen the Reticello technique (in Italian this means “little filet”) was developed, a forerunner of the production of laces.
1440
No sooner the spinning wheel had been introduced, than it was nearly obsolete. Leonardo da Vinci developed a flyer and twister which twisted the yarn and wound it onto the spindle at the same time.
1530
The German carver Johann Jürgen invented the treadle drive for the spinning and twisting wheel. From now on the spinner could rotate her spindle with one foot and had both hands free for taking care that the yarn would be spun in a more even thickness.
1755
In England the first mechanical device for producing a seam was constructed by the German Charles Frederic Weisenthal.
1767
Some years before the invention of the steam engine by James Watt the British self-made engineer James Hargreaves constructed the „Spinning Jenny“, named after his daughter. This was the first spinning machine driving several spindles at the same time. The output of “Spinning Jenny” was about 40 times higher than that of the former treadle spinning wheel. Before 1788 already 20.000 devices of “Spinning Jenny” were in use.
1769
In England Richard Arkwright invented the fly spinner and twister called „Water frame“, due to the fact that originally it was driven by water power, however, later on by horse gins. This marked the beginning of the era of the textile industry.
1779
Samuel Crampton succeeded in constructing a synthesis of both machines of Hargreaves and Arkwright which he called “Mule” because it was a “crossbreed” of both techniques.
By 1800
The German Balthasar Krems from Mayen/Eifel constructed a chain-stitch sewing machine.
1828
Hand embroidery was exclusively made by women at home in former times, however, in 1828 the construction of the first hand embroidery machine by Josua Heilmann from Alsace changed a lot: The embroidery machine did the work of approx. 40 women and transmitted the pattern in parallel to 130 needles embroidering at the same time. The machine was only operated by a worker guiding the pantograph and by a woman in charge of the threadding.
As from 1830
A ring spinning frame was developed by which the cotton thread could be spun in one go. It took a long time, until the 1880’s, to establish the ring spinning frame. The increasing reliability of the pure spinning machines and the mechanisation of the weaving preparation led to the discharge of female and child labour.
As from 1840
In 1840 Heilmann’s hand embroidery machine was further developed by Franz Elysäus Rittmeyer and the mechanic Franz Anton Vogler, however, the basic idea of Heilmann is still existing nowadays, i.e. to put a big embroidery frame in front of a large number of needles and – contrary to hand embroidery - not to move the needles but the embroidery frame stitch by stitch.
It was a great time for embroideries, the crinoline being an absolute must for the fashion-conscious lady. The huge volume of the crinoline of course had to be decorated with several flounces and laces. If by 1840 one flounce for a dress was sufficient, by the end of the 1850’s the Empress Eugenie appeared in a cloud of immense 103 embroidered tulle flounces. Also bed linen, table linen, covers for cushions and furniture, parasols, men’s vests etc. were embroidered. During the period of Biedermeier embroidered accessories as presents were highly appreciated.
1846
The American Elias Howe had a sewing machine patented which worked with two threads and a shuttle. Elias Howe is referred to as being the inventor of the double lock stitch sewing machine.
Sewing silk is the classical type of sewing thread, as real silk (“endless”) and schappe-spun (“fibre pieces”).
1862
Isaac Merrit Singer founded the company Singer. The first industrial production of sewing machines according to the idea of Elias Howe started.
1863
The jacquard weaver Isaak Gröbli from Switzerland set new standards by inventing the shuttle embroidery machine. At first it was secretly smiled at this object, however, within only a few years it became already 10 times faster than the hand embroidery machine. In 1867 the first shuttle embroideries are shown at the World Exhibition in Paris.
Embroideries of cotton and coloured silk on wool were made for robes and furniture; leather and velvet were embroidered with golden and silver silk for shoe factories. Coloured or white cotton embroideries on lightweight linen cloth were especially successful.
1879
Max Gritzner from Karlsruhe constructed a sewing machine with two rotary sewing hooks. In addition, he developed a bobbin case fan, a rotary thread take-up and controlled thread tension.
1880-1914
The lace industry boomed during 1880 and 1914. Since the brilliant times of the crinoline such a great fashion show of cloth and accessories like in this period was never seen again.
1881
It occurred to the embroidery manufacturer Theodor Bickel from Plauen to embroider pure tulle. New designs were created and the “Saxon lace” gained world-wide fame.
1883
The company Robert Neubauer from Plauen applied for a patent for the “manufacturing of perforated embroidery”. By this procedure filigree structures could be created, known as Guipure laces or air laces.
1884
The Earl Hilaire de Chardonnet succeeded in producing artificial silk from solute cellulose for the first time, thereby implementing the idea the British Robert Hooke had in 1665, to produce artificial threads from a semifluid.
1887
The company Wilcox & Gibbs produced a sewing machine with three rotary sewing hooks which gained great importance.
1889
At the World Exhibition in Paris Earl Hilaire de Chardonnet presented the first spinning machine for artificial silk and the first fabrics made of his nitro-artificial silk.
1891
In Besançon Earl Hilaire de Chardonnet spun the first industrial artificial silk. Daily production: 110 kg.
1898
In England Charles Henry Stearn applied for a patent for the manufacture of fibres of viscose solution.
1900
At the World Exhibition in Paris yarns and fabrics of viscose art silk were shown for the first time.
1913
The German chemist Fritz Klatte obtained a patent for the manufacture of textile fibres of vinyl chloride.
1916
During the First World War textile fibres ran short. Artificial silk was remembered in these times of need. From viscose art silk “staple fibres” were cut, replacing the spun fibres missing.
1922
The German Professor Hermann Staudinger (Nobel Prize in 1953, founder of the macromolecular chemistry) provided a firm scientific basis for the production of modern chemical fibres to the man-made fibre industry.
As novelty in the sewing thread industry the first mercerised cotton twist was presented. So far only dull yarns quadruple-wound or higher wound were produced.
1924
The term “artificial silk“ so far in use was replaced – the initiative came from the USA – by the name “Rayon“. Not until the 1950’s this term “Rayon” for viscose art silk was used in Germany more and more often (today: viscose filament yarns). The classical application areas of viscose threads have been and still are the shuttle embroidery and the embroidery by the multi-head machine.
1930
The American Dr. Wallace H. Carothers developed a polyester with amazing thready properties. The fibres could be stretched, thereby becoming elastic and very tear resistant. Due to low melting points they could not be used for textiles. Carothers continued to research with polyamides.
The company Würker in Dresden constructed a three-head embroidery machine driven by punched cards according to the patent of Max Bredtschneider. The embroidering heads worked synchronously. This was the birth of the multi-head embroidery machine. The size of the surface to be embroidered was about 10 x 25 cm. In addition, also a machine for punching (formerly “card cutting”!) was constructed by Bredtschneider. For the machine embroidery mercerised cotton threads as well as viscose threads were mainly used.
1931
Emil Hubert, Heinrich Papst and Hermann Hecht spun the first synthetic textile fibre out of polyvinylchloride. This development marked the year of birth of chemical fibres.
1938
Wallace H. Carothers and the German P. Schlack independently from each other produced polyamide with high-quality textile properties for the first time. After the assignation of the patents and the development of the production the technical manufacture of nylon and perlon was started in 1938.
1941
Invention of polyester fibres of polyethyleneterephthalate by the British chemists J. R. Whinfield and J.T. Dickson
1954
In Germany the Farbenfabrik Bayer AG started the production of acrylic fibres (Dralon). In the production of sewing threads polyester and polyamide in an endless construction respectively schappe-spun (polyester) were introduced as synthetic raw material.
1955
The production of the polyester fibres Diolen and Trevira was started under licence by Glanzstoff AG and Farbwerke Hoechst AG.
1963
The first sewing robots and advanced double lock stitch quick sewers with approx. 5.000 rpm needed an essentially higher sewing performance of the sewing threads used. In parallel the first cover twists in the raw material combination of polyester / cotton were developed as higher-performance twist construction.
1970
Now it definitely was no longer a silk thread where everything hung upon but a synthetic one instead. Due to their superior technical properties synthetic fibres, as far as sewing yarns are concerned, made silk become an unimportant product. The whole potential of the twist construction and the raw materials was used now, offering a wide-range spectrum of sewing threads. The demand for an all-purpose sewing thread is shaping further developments.
1979
A new generation of cover twist revolutionised the sewing thread technology: polyester/polyester cover twist.
1986
Increasing requirements for the property use of embroideries and the scarcity of raw materials as far as highly resistant viscose yarns are concerned, forced the development of a polyester machine embroidery yarn. A trilobal fibre cross section allows for a higher lustre effect than that of sewing yarns produced so far.
Today
Silk – a luxury raw material – is preferably used for high-quality articles of clothing. In the range of sewing threads the lustrous silk thread can still be found in trade and crafts only.
Cotton as natural fibre is found in some fields of application. In the clothing sector, in particular in the case of eco collections, it is reverted to cotton. Cotton sewing threads are mainly used in crafts and in special application ranges like garment dyeing.
Still today, cotton is proving its worth as embroidery thread for linen and cotton fabrics, since according to the field of application a matt visual appearance of embroideries is preferred to the lustrous characteristics.
Due to the “tailor-made“ profiles the synthetic sewing and embroidery threads replaced the raw material for natural fibres to a large extent. According to the wide variety of requirements (ultraviolet resistance, rotting resistance, …) chemical fibres offer highest quality and application safety for seams.
More and more often, in addition to the classical viscose yarns also polyester yarns are applied as machine embroidery threads.
Permanent developments in the field of sewing and embroidery machines (hook lubrication, speed, sewing performance etc.) are made to meet the constantly increasing requirements for the quality of the sewing and embroidery threads to be processed.