How Are Cotton & Polyester Blends Made?
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Cotton
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Cotton is grown from the cotton plant and harvested by machines called strippers, which pulls the cotton tufts from the heads of the plants. The individual tufts of cotton are filled with hard-cased seeds that have many hooks or barbs. As a result, the cotton tufts are brought to a cotton mill and poured into a machine called a picker. It's comprised of a series of rolling pins covered with interlocking teeth that grind the cotton tufts and separate them from the seeds, which fall into the bottom of a waste-trough. From there, the cotton fibers are bagged by hand and sent to another machine called a drawing frame, which is an advanced version of the early "spinning jennies." The individual fibers of the cotton are compressed and bound into a single, long thread which is wound around a bobbin. These bobbins are then used in the production of either pure cotton thread or blends with other materials.
Polyester
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Polyester is a material made from fossil fuels, not something that is grown. It's produced by the combination of carboxylic acid and ethyl ether in a vacuum environment, though the exact details of this process vary from one production company to the next and are considered trade secrets. The polyester is forced out of its mixing tanks in the form of a long ribbon, which is chopped into chips. At present, the polyester is still too malleable because of high water content. The chips pass under a series of hot air blowers, similar to over-sized blow-dryers, on a production line until the excess water evaporates. From there the chips fall into an oven and are melted. The oven is pressurized, forcing a thin line of liquid polyester out a pin-hole in the oven's bottom. The liquid dries almost instantly with the air, and is collected by being spun directly around a large bobbin. The bobbin is then dyed by dunking in pigments, and made into pure thread or a blend.
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Blend
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Both polyester and cotton bobbins are brought to an upright machine called a tablet weaver. The bobbins are fitted by hand onto spindles, and the threads of each are passed through a square metal card with holes in its face. This card is called a tablet, and the number of holes it has is dependent upon the intended diameter of the final cotton-polyester thread as well as the ratio of cotton to polyester of the finished cloth. Each thread is passed through a separate hole and tied to the end of an empty bobbin which is held on a spindle similar to that of a lathe. The spindle turns the empty bobbin while simultaneously flipping it end over end. This motion causes the different threads to twist together after being drawn through the tablet to create a single thread of much larger thickness. The finished cotton-poly bobbin is detached from the tablet weaver and then sent to a device called a loom to be woven into cloth.
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