Chenille Fabric

"Chenille" is French for "caterpillar". It is an appropriate name, as is a fuzzy chenille fabric that had a metamorphic development. Three different "plush" products developed between 1754 and 1895 in France, Scotland and America. The first was an embroidery-like substance designed as an application for hand embroidery work. The other was a mass-produced shawl, which has inspired a machine manufactured techniques. The third was a hand-sewing techniques for cotton bedspreads that were brought into the plant bed rug production.

France :

Hand embroidery knot mask "is a nail in the thread is looped around the needle one or more times, then knotted at the top of the fabric. Knot stitches add texture to an embroidery piece, but is very time consuming to produce. In the 1780s, was an application chenille fabrics introduced as a labor-saver for natural images, such as trees or grass. The substance had a linen base with fuzzy woolen strands form a mat on top. This chenille were also popular as a dress upper decoration and twisted into a thick, hanging Caterpillar fringe

Scotland :

In the 1830s Alexander Buchanan worked as a foreman for an industrial fabric mill in Paisley, Scotland. Buchanan has developed a method to mass produce a chenille fabric, which he sold as fuzzy shawls. His technique woven tapestry of colored woolen yarn on an existing curtain fabric. So, the carpets were cut into thin strips, which were raveled and frizzed on heated rollers. Second Paisley shawl manufacturer, James Templeton, invested several years developing Buchanan's technique in the manufacture of machine tufted-pile carpets in a quality that successfully imitated expensive hand-woven oriental carpets.

Dalton, Georgia :

Catherine Evans (later Catherine Evans Whitener) in Dalton, Ga., was 15 years old in 1895 when she invented a shortcut to the tufted appearance candlewick embroidery. Candlewick was a New England version of the English 17th century tufting of white-on-white bedspreads. After reading about it, Miss Cathy "decided to make a white-on-white furry bedspread as a gift to her brother and his wife. Her first step was to sew a layer of cotton cloth in a decorative pattern on a cotton base. She sewed running loops of cotton yarn in the pattern and cut the loops to make wisps. She fell substance in boiling water to keep the yarn in place, as if it were embroidered. At the same time, frizzed yarn like pom-Poms.

Production :

Miss Cathy's bedspreads were a piecework cottage industry in Dalton households. Her family made materials available to women who did hand tuft work. In the depths of the depression in the 1930s, they could make a maximum of 24 cents a day, working 10 hours a day for three to produce bedspreads. Singer Sewing Machine Company in Chattanooga, Tennessee, developed tufting machines with many needles that could mass produce the tufting. In 1933 Roosevelt created the passage of minimum wage labor an incentive for rural men to work in Dalton cotton fabric mills. The tufted design was marketed as chenille.

Rug :

As in Paisley, Dalton's next step was an imitation of chenille expensive oriental rugs. Singer tufting machines were built with as many as 1500 needles for carpet production. During the 1940s, was chenille not considered necessary to the war effort, and if the government shuts Dalton chenille plant, 3,000 workers were without jobs. Only around 1000 found work in factories that produce cotton naval supplies. After the war, the chenille plant again opened with an emphasis on carpets. Broadloom (12-foot) carpet was invented in Dalton, and 90 percent of the global wall-to-wall carpeting production occurs within a 30-mile radius of Dalton.