How to recognize real handmade Thai silk

Unfortunately, a lot of the Thai "silk" available for purchase is fake. If you are thinking to buy 100% pure Thai silk but you don't know how to recognize real silk fabric from silk imitation, here are a couple of hints.

First, check the luster: if you hold 100% silk fabric to the light, it will usually look different according to the angle you hold it. The reflection of fake Thai silk will always look white, independently of the angle you hold it in the light.

Second, handmade Thai silk will usually have small flaws in the fabric. This is not a sign of bad quality, but the guarantee that the silk handcraft that you are holding is handmade and therefore 100% unique.

 

Finally, if you are still not sure, you can use the definitive test: burn it! No kidding! You don't need to burn it all, take a couple of small loose silk threads and light them with a match or a lighter. If the the silk you are burning is an imitation it will melt and small balls of material will accumulate at the end of the thread. Real Thai silk on the other hand will smell like burned hair.

If you are planning to buy Thai silk from the Internet, you came to the right place. In our online shop you will find only 100% pure Thai silk. Guaranteed.

History

 The History of Silk

   Chinese legend attributes the first creation of the wife of the mythical Yellow Emperor who is thought to have lives 5000 years ages. Recent archeological discoveries, however, indicate that sericulture was known in China some 6000 to 7000 years ago. For thousands of years silk was reserved for the use of the Emperor, it was the most closely guarded secret in all of history.
   By the time of the Han Dynast silk had become a vital part of the Chinese economy. People paid their taxes in silk, silk was used as bow strings, for fishing lies, on musical instruments and, of course, for garments. The secret could no longer be kept. The Greeks and Romans regarded silk as one of the most priceless products In 200 BC Chinese emigrants introduced sericulture to Korea and from there it, no doubt, spread to other Asian countries.
   Stories tell of two Nestorian monks who, in about 550 AD, smuggled silkworm eggs in their hollow bamboo staves to Byzantium. Travelling along the Silk Road silk finally came to be produced in Italy at the time of the Second Crusade in the thirteenth century.
   In 1688 the French Ambassador writes that the King often gave ‘ silk pagnes of an extraordinary beauty and gaudiness ‘ to the lady of his court. We do not know, however, whether they were locally produced or imported.

How to take care of your Silk Fabric

Basic Advice of Purchasing Silk

1. Hand-made and local silk thread fabrics possess some knots and rough wrinkles due to the size of Mai Pung thread. However, if the fabric is woven from high quality Mai Yod thread will be fine.
2. Silk luster is influenced by the quality of threads. If “Mai Yod” is used, the silk fabric will be more shiny than if is made from “Mai-Sao” or “Mai-Sub” threads.
3. Thai silk feels soft and fine, it also makes a rustling sound.
4. Pure silk can be known by separating vertical silk and “Mai Pung” thread and then setting them alight. Pure Thai silk will burn brightly, If it is free from chemicals, with a smell of burning hair and a lump of ash will be left behind. Artificial silk (“CHURI” Silk), on the other hand, when burned, smells of burning paper.


5. Good quality silk is fine and smooth to the touch. The color will be uniform all over the textile and will not wash out as only dyes of the very highest quality are used. Shinawatra Thai silk is made from carefully selected filaments of the very highest quality, which gives the textile great durability and additional strength.
   Our quality control laboratory employing the latest technology monitors every step of the manufacturing process, thus ensuring uniformity and quality of material and consistent colors batch after batch.
Cleaning and Ironing of Thai Silk
   Though Thai silk is durable, it is not so tough as cotton or linen, therefore dry cleaning is recommended, so as to retain the original texture.
   Thai silk can be washed in lukewarm water but only with the mildest soap, then rinse the silk in vinegar to retain its original luster and allow it to drip dry in the shade. Thai silk should be ironed on the inside just before it is dry or else put a damp cloth over the silk and iron.
Warning
   In no circumstances ever put Thai silk in wash and dry cleaning machine.

Thai Silk

 Thai Silk

Silk yarn has always been ranked as “The Queen of Textile Fibers” for the obvious reason that it is the smoothest and most gorgeous fiber with nothing else can compare. When lovingly woven into textile, it produces an incredibly beautiful sheen of fabric, especially it is “Thai Silk”, which require meticulously and amazingly complicated processes to produce each priceless work of art.
The long and tedious process begins with raising silkworms on a diet of mulberry leaves until they are fully grown and transformed into oval cocoons, after which they are boiled in water after which the silk reeling process creates the precious silk threads. The filament then go through several washing and cleansing processes before reaching dye stage which produces a myriad of mesmerizing colors ready for weaving. The lustrous silk threads require complicated know-how and highly skilled hands to maneuver, setting up the warp on the handloom. The finer threads are spun onto small bobbins, placed inside wooden shuttles as weft element before being carefully woven with the warp threads on the simple wooden handloom.

Categories

Types of Thai silk and their weaving

According to many sources Thai silk has been around since over 3000 years. During this time, the different regions of Thailand developed different and unique types of silk.

Plain weave silk is the simplest method of weaving; the weft thread passes over and under each ward thread, then under and over on the following line. Although the method is simple there are many variations that enable the weaver to create amazing textures and light variations. The warp may be a thicker ply then the weft, or the weft thicker than the warp, or the two may be the same ply, described as a balance weave. Plain weave can produce monochrome silk fabric, the warp one color and the weft another color. This creates tonal variations across the surface of the silk fabric that change according to the direction of light. Tonal quality can be enhanced by plying (twisting) two yarns of different colors or tones together, either in the warp or in the weft, or in both warp and weft.

The key to the rough texture Thai silk fabric is the use of a coarse, irregular silk yarn. Even if such silk cloth has uneven and slightly knotty texture, it is still soft. Smooth texture Thai silk is usually 1-, 2- or 3-ply. Ply simply means the number of threads used for the weft when weaving silk fabric. More ply means more thickness and less smoothness.

“Mud-mee” silk is one of the best kept secrets outside of Thailand. The distinct “mud-mee”, literally tie-dye, silk fabric originates from northeastern part of Thailand, the Isaan region. The fabric is woven using the tying and dyeing technique to create designs. The patterns, colors and styles recall the cultural heritage which has been handed down from the past to the present.

There are three methods to “Mud-mee“ weaving; the first is to tie-dye the warps; the second is to tie-dye the wefts and the third is to tie-dye both the warps and the wefts. Any of these methods must be done before the actual weaving begins. Where to tie-dye is up to the weaver.

Khit is another traditional style of Thai silk weaving from the north-eastern region of Thailand. Khit or continuous supplementary weft is the process of placing a supplementary yarn into the web of tabby weave, passing from selvage to selvage thus enabling the use of a shuttle for the supplementary yarns. The result is a pattern in one color that floats on the surface of the weave. The supplementary yarns are placed into the weave by the assistance of special shafts that raise the warp to a certain pattern allowing the supplementary yarns to be placed alternately with the tabby weave yarns. Prior to the invention of the special shafts, shed sticks were placed in the warp to indicate the pattern for the supplementary yarns, thus restricting the repeat of the design to one repeat of the exact same pattern. The use of the shafts allowed for endless repeats of the exact same pattern.

Well known designs include sandal-wood flowers, jasmine flowers, elephants, horses and monuments. Khit silk fabrics can be distinguished by the fact that the extra weft yarns result in ridges of the same color extending across the piece and the the design is repeated. It may or may not extend the length of the piece, but it has definite staring and ending points.

Due to the handmade nature of these silk shawls, the colors, sizes and the patterns will contain variations that is a feature of genuine Thai handmade silk products and which help distinguish handcrafted Thai silk products from imitations.

Brocade silk is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven silk, with or without gold and silver threads and it is yet another type of silk handcraft produced in Thailand. Even though brocade silk was not originated in Thailand, local villages in the north have been able to acquire the technique and enrich it by adding it's own traditions and culture.

Silk process

Process-Silk Reeling Process

1. Boil clean water in a pot raising temperature to 80 c. Put 40 or 50 silk cocoons into the hot water. The sticky Serricin substance will then melt thereby releasing the silk filaments.

2. Gently push floating cocoons down into the water with a forked stirrer.

3. After a certain time all the cocoons will float to the surface, they should then be gathered so that the loose filaments of delicate silk can be pulled out and spun together to creating silk threads.

4. Silk filaments when pulled gently though the forked stirrer will separate the smooth yarns from the cocoons. The silk thread is then transferred to wooden pulley, which is attached and secured to the pot, before it is placed inside a nearby basket.

5. Keep refilling the boiling pot with more cocoons.

6. When a cocoon has been completely reeled out – each cocoon is made up of a filament between 600 and 900 meters long! - the silk chrysalis will sink to the bottom of the pot and can later be cleaned out.

  

Silk Yarn Preparation 

The Spinning Wheel is a wooden instrument used to transferring silk yarn onto small wooden bobbins. The wheel is usually made of bamboo or rattan.

The Swift (a reel for winding yarn) is another silk spinning tool, which separates and prevents the silk thread bundle from entangling. It looks like a propeller made of bamboo. Both spinning wheel and swift are normally used together in transferring silk yarn which comes in bundles onto small wooden bobbins, ready for use whether as warp or weft Threads.

Silk Cocoons

Yarn comes from "Silk Cocoons"

Yarns, which produce wondrous silk fabrics, come from the fine web naturally, produced by silk larvae in which they wrap themselves and which are called “Silk Cocoon”.

The cocoons are part of the life cycle of a variety of moth belonging to the Bombycidae family in order of Lepidoptera, which has been domesticated and raised to produce yarn,Its scientific name is Bombyx Mori.
A silkworm moth is usually grayish white color and has two twin wings. It has a marking that looks like a mouth although in fact it has a proboscis. A female is usually larger than male, neither can fly far. Their flights seem more like clumsy jumping, ending up with a sudden fall. Silkworm moths are short lived, mating and laying eggs and dying in only a few days.

 A female Bombyx Mori after mating is capable of laying between 250 and 500 eggs, the number of eggs varied with each specific breed of the moths.

 Bombyx Mori egg hatches into hungry tiny silkworms, that feeds on finely sliced mulberry leaves for 3 or 4 days before shedding its first mould. The enlarged silkworm lies stretched in hibernation for a day and a night, it then wakes up and continues feeding.

   After a few days the process is repeated, but now in it is no longer necessary to slice the mulberry leaves. Yet again the process is repeated and the silkworm is now in its fourth stage of rapid growth, which lasts for 3 or 4 days.
   Finally, in the fifth stage, which lasts for 7 or 8 days, the worm is eating vigorously, becoming fat and full-grown. It is now some 10,000 times as heavy as when it was hatched. The adult silkworm has a gland, which produces enzyme that turns the whole body yellow - hence the color “ ripe – silk ”. In this last stage it stops eating, its body shrinks and becomes clearer in color. It raises and sways its head looking for a suitable nesting place.
   The fully developed silkworms are now transferred to bamboo tray where they settles down and starts to discharge the fine filament that enmeshes their bodies into a cocoon from which we derive our heavenly silk fabrics.