By Rosemary David – Art in Tanzania internship
Textile designing is the creative and technical process by which thread or yarn fibers are woven together or interlaced to form a flexible, functional, and decorative cloth or fabric which is subsequently printed upon or otherwise adorned.
Textile design is further broken down into three major disciplines, printed textile design, woven textile design, and mixed media textile design each of which utilize different methods to produce a surface ornamented fabric for variable uses and markets.
Textile Design as a practice has evolved to become an industry integral to other disciplines such as fashion,interior design and fine arts.
Textile designing in Tanzania most is applicable in the textile manufacturing industries and fashion industries.
In textile manufacturing industries whereby fibers are processed into yarn in the spinning stage weaving stage knitting stage and processing stage where by fabric is made in ready wear.
Spinning is the twisting together of drawn-out strands of fibers to form yarn, though it is colloquially used to describe the process of drawing out, inserting the twist, and winding onto bobbins. In simple words, spinning is a process in which we convert fibers by passing through certain processes like Blow room, Carding, Drawing, Combing, Simplex, Ring Frame and finally winding into yarns.
Weaving is defined by the interlacing of two individual strands of yarn or thread at right angles. This pattern creates a strong, yet flexible structure that holds the individual threads in place, thus creating a solid cloth or fabric.
And the yarns undergo weaving stage where by the interlacement of warps and weft yarns at right angle to form a woven fabric like khanga kitenge bedsheet or maasai shuka and Kikoy.
Knitting is processing in which inter looping of yarns occurs to form a knitted fabric like T-shirt sweaters mosquitos’ nets.
After weaving or knitting the fabric undergo different wet preparation processes before dyeing or printing so that dyes and prints would penetrate easily or absorbed.
Then the fabric is dyed or printed into different design according to the customer desire
Also, the fabric may be sent to garment manufacturing so that it can be made to ready wear garment.