Spinning & Weaving

Weaving has been carried out in Pembrokeshire for thousands of years. It is likely that cave women were the first people to use wool to make cloth. In the early days, weaving would have been a long slow process because the tools would have been very basic.

The weaving process was greatly developed with the introduction of the drop spindle. This is a simple device consisting of a small stick with a hook or notch at the top and a weight at the bottom. It is used by hooking the notch on the top onto the fluffy ball of raw wool or cotton, and then turning the stick. The weighted end gives the spindle momentum, and as it spins the tangled threads are drawn out of the ball of wool and twisted together to form a 'yarn'.

An even better method of spinning was introduced with the inventing of the spinning wheel. This is similar to the spindle but the wheel sits horizontally and is powered not by a weight and gravity but by man-power. Most spinning wheels are operated by a crank connected to a foot treadle, which leaves the hand free to feed the loose tangled fibres onto the spindle. Spinning is fairly easy to pick up, but takes a long time to produce enough yarn to weave with. One hand weaver working at a quick pace needs 10 spinners to produce the necessary yarn.

Weaving is carried out using a loom. In the early days a loom would have consisted of a simple square frame made by lashing four sticks together and then winding yarn around the frame to form parallel threads known as a 'wrap'. The 'weft' or 'woof' was then formed by weaving yarn through the wrap at right angles using the fingers or a simple device called a shuttle which was a stick with a notch in both ends around which the yarn was wound.

Using the basic shuttle was a long and tedious process. The development of the boat shuttle made the process a lot easier. This was very similar to the basic shuttle but it incorporated the already-loaded spindle inside it.

Looms have developed a great deal over the past couple of centuries and a large amount of weaving is now done using automated looms. However, there are still several hand-weavers found around the county.