ABC Listen.
Hello, my name is Nige.
And today on Imagine This, we're playing Dress Up.
Bunny ears like Hawaii shirts.
Some kind of dresses.
That looks nice.
Pyjamas.
I'm going to dress up like a pilot.
All these clothes look so different and feel so different too.
This one's smooth.
This one's rough.
Oh, this one's noisy.
Oh, sparkly.
How come?
They have different materials, so if clothes were made from wool, it would feel really fluffy.
Cotton is really comfy.
And I have, like, socks that are made out of cotton.
And they make you super fast.
Emma, Taylor and Juno had a question about fabric.
Hi, Dr Nidge.
My name's Juno and I'm five years old.
Hi, my name's Emma.
I'm seven years old.
My name is Taylor.
I'm five years old.
How is fabric made?
There are so many kinds of fabric.
Cotton.
Wool.
Denim.
Leather.
Usually has like these cool patterns around it.
Is it just clothes?
What about the rug?
My bed sheets.
Carpet.
My unboots.
Blankets.
Coatings.
Yeah.
And the pillowcases, are they made of fabric too?
No, it's probably not Fabric.
We should talk to Emma Peters.
She's a researcher at the University of New South Wales and an expert on Fabric.
I reckon she'll be able to help us.
Hi Emma.
Hi Emma.
Oh, hi Midge.
Hey kids.
Welcome to my studio.
Emma, it's beautiful in here.
Look at all this fabric.
I just look around and there's so much.
Oh, it's everywhere.
Yeah.
It's all stacked up in piles and hanging from the ceiling.
It's so colourful in here.
And it's all soft and cosy.
What's that?
It's a sewing machine.
We use them to join pieces of fabric together.
I can make lots of cool things with it.
What is fabric?
Yeah, we think it's clothes, but is it also bedsheets and pillowcases and curtains?
Absolutely.
You can see fabric all around you.
It's on the bus seat.
It's the welcome mat at your front door.
It's your comfy blanket and your favourite teddy.
Plus all your clothes, of course.
Is that how you make fabric?
With a sewing machine?
No, sewing machines are what we use once we've already got pieces of fabric to put together.
But it's a long journey to get to this point.
That's OK.
We can use our imaginations.
Great idea.
There are lots of different fabrics that are made in lots of different ways.
So let's follow the journey of cotton.
That's a fabric you'd probably have at home.
Where?
You might have cotton sheets or shirts or even denim jeans.
We can follow the journey from field to fabric.
Wow, there are rows and rows of green plants and there are white fluffy balls all over them.
It's like being in a field of cotton wool.
It looks like a farm.
I can see some cotton there and there.
It's a crop of cotton.
It kind of feels like cotton and then again it feels like wool.
This is what clothes are made of.
There are quite a few steps to get through first.
The cotton plant is a small green shrub and it grows well in hot places.
Whoa, that's a lot of water.
Oh yes, the cotton in just one pair of jeans takes 7,000 litres of water.
Whoa, really?
10 years of drinking water for a person.
That's so much water.
Are these cotton balls flowers?
I think the flowers die and cotton grows.
Yeah, kind of.
Cotton is more like the fruit of the plant.
But instead of picking it to eat, we pick it to make fabric.
Can I pick some?
Sure.
Ouch, it's prickly.
Look out.
The outside of the cotton ball can be sharp and a bit spiky.
Do people pick this all by hand?
In many countries, it's still picked by hand and it's really, really hard work.
In Australia, we use machines to pick it.
They're like special tractors called harvesters.
Hey, stop!
It's running all over the cotton can!
Stop that.
It's supposed to.
So it kind of looks like a tractor.
It's getting all the plants and then it gets sucked up into the back of it.
Exactly.
The front of the harvester has spinning combs that brush over the cotton plant and take off all the little cotton balls.
They get sucked into a big basket and squashed and rolled into a huge bale of cotton.
Hey look, something's coming out of the harvester.
It looks like it's pulling.
It's the bale of cotton.
Once the bale is big enough about the height of a doorway, it gets wrapped in plastic and pushed out of the harvester.
Incredible.
What happens now?
It goes to the cotton gin.
First the cotton is cleaned to get all the dirt and sticks out of it, and then big machines comb through it to remove the cotton seeds from the cotton fibres.
Fibres are those little white hairs of cotton.
Now the cotton has been cleaned and the seeds have been taken out, it looks like a big pile of white fluffy cotton wool.
Is it fabric now?
Not yet.
Now it gets sent on big ships to factories in other countries to be spun.
Spun?
Yeah, spinning is the incredibly old practice of twisting together short fibres to make long, strong thread or yarn or rope.
Let's check it out.
They squeeze it and they twist it and make it really thin.
Exactly.
Humans have been spinning yarn for tens of thousands of years.
Whoa.
In the past, we would have used our hands to twist and spin together stringy bits of bark and other plants to make thread.
Now we use machines.
How?
We basically put it through a really big hairbrush.
Has anyone learnt how to flat hair?
I have.
Oh, yeah, I have.
I'm learning at the moment, actually.
My daughter's hair.
Making thread is really similar.
You brush the cotton, just like you brush your hair, to get all the knots out.
Then, just like a flat, you take different pieces and wrap them around each other to make one long thread.
Why do you have to wrap so many little bits together?
It's all about making things stronger and more useful.
Cotton fibres are short, only about the length of a grape.
You can't do much with them and they break easily, just like a single strand of hair.
You can break that with your fingers, right?
Yes.
But if you tie your hair together in a long plait, could you break that with your hand?
No way.
So loose cotton fibres, the short little hairs, are twisted together to make long, strong thread.
And then the thread is woven into fabric?
Yep.
How?
Let's go check out a loom thread.
You have two needles and it looks like it's knitting something, and then the like the strings tied through, and then they might tie it together and you can like make cool shapes out of it, like weave it together exactly.
Once you have lots of thread, you can weave it into fabric.
First you lay lots of pieces of thread side by side all in one direction.
This is called the warp.
OK, warps, line up.
We need straight lines.
Then you take another piece of thread and cross it over and under the other thread sideways.
This is called the weft.
Excellent.
Now, wefts, get ready to weave.
Over, under, over, under, over, under, over, under.
Excuse me.
Sorry.
And then another over, under.
That's it.
You're weaving.
And it's making fabric.
So for a piece of cotton fabric like a shirt, it's just lots of pieces of thread crossing over and under each other really tightly.
Yep.
There are endless shapes and patterns we can make.
What makes the colours?
Dye.
It's kind of like paint or pigment.
Yeah.
In the past, we got colours from nature, like sea creatures or insects or flowers.
You can get lovely colours from eucalyptus leaves or onion skins, even avocado peel.
Avocado peel?
So you can like put it in this hot pot which you put the dye into which comes from different coloured flowers, and it will.
Like, soak up all the colour.
And I have to keep it in there for a little while to soak up all the colour.
Exactly.
People still dye their fabrics naturally like this, but mostly for the clothes you buy at shops.
They're dyed with chemicals to give them colour.
Is that bad for the environment?
It can be.
If the dyes are not used safely, it could hurt the workers at the factories...
Or the chemicals can damage the land and waterways if it's not handled carefully.
We definitely want to keep people safe.
And you've got to protect the land.
Yeah.
Our clothes pass through many hands and machines and countries before we get to wear them.
So it's hard to know exactly what's happening along the way.
Is there something we can do?
Yeah, we can get creative.
Instead of buying new stuff, old fabric can be fixed or turned into other things.
I could just mend it.
That's a great idea.
You can actually give it a second life to bring it to another people.
I've actually heard that.
Oh, that's great to hear.
Fabric is so important to our lives.
Our snuggly blankets keep us warm.
Mosquito nets protect us from itchy bugs.
And our clothes are really special.
Because it keeps you warm and with otherwise you're naked.
Yes, but we also get to express ourselves through our clothes and show the world who we are.
Emma, thank you so much for showing us how fabric is made.
My pleasure.
And this is just cotton.
What about flannel?
Yeah, or organza.
Denim.
Wool.
Or soft velvet.
Good one.
So, Emma, Taylor and Juno, fabric can be made from lots of things.
Plants.
Animal hair.
Plastics.
To make cotton, we take the fluffy balls from cotton plants.
With harvester.
Beep, beep.
And comb it and clean it.
Get all the dust and seeds out.
And untangle all the little fibres.
With a big hair wash machine.
Then the short fibres are twisted together to make long, strong thread.
By spinning.
After the thread has been spun, it's woven together.
Over and under and over and under.
Criss-cross.
To make fabric.
Wool.
Cotton.
Polyester.
And dyed lots of colours.
Red.
Green.
Orange.
Pink.
Fabric isn't just clothes.
It's our toys my teddy, my toy giraffe Bibbly, our furniture, the pillows and the curtains, and a way to express ourselves and our cultures.
It takes a lot of time and a lot of people to make fabrics, so it's important to look after them so they can keep us warm, dry and looking good for years to come.
Imagine This is an ABC Kids Listen podcast, hosted by me, Dr Neeraj Lal.
A big thanks to our guest, Emma Peters, and to all the kids who helped make the show.
Today's episode was written and produced by Samia Bella, with sound design by Wei Nguyen, and was made on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Bidjigal and Gadigal lands.
Our executive producer is Emma Gibbs.
For more podcasts to play, music to move and stories and soundtracks for sleep.
Download the ABC Kids Listen app free from your app store.
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