Where does Silk come from?

Silk. We think of it as the most luxurious of fabrics. Smooth, supple, with a slight bit of shine... and higher priced than most other fibers on the market.

Have you ever wondered where silk comes from? Well, let me take that back. Most of us know that silk is produced by silkworms. However what most people don't know is exactly how that works.

Well, silkworms spin themselves little cocoons, like butterflies. And those cocoons look like this:
That white stuff that forms the cocoon? That's silk.

We got to actually handle them in class today. They were older, so they were very hard and stiff, and we could feel the little dead worm rattling around in there. Gross, yeah? But totally cool!

We also got to see unprocessed and processed flax and bison wool.

And this was just in my History of Fashion class! We'll get to visit it all again and in much more depth in Textiles.