VELVET MANUFACTURE. This beau tiful substance is mostly a silk fabric, re markable for the softness of its surface. This softness is owing to a loOse pile or surface of threads, occasioned by the insertion of short pieces of silk thread doubled under the shoot, weft, or cross threads. These stand upright so thickly as entirely. to conceal the inter lacing of the warp and shoot. The richness of the velvet depends upon the closeness of the pile-threads. The insertion of these short threads is effected in the following manner :— Instead of having only one row of warp threads, which will be crossed alternately over and under by the shoot, there are two sets, one of which is to form the regular warp, while the other is to constitute the pile; and these two sets are so arranged in the loom as to be kept separate. The quantity of the pile thread necessary is very much more than that of the warp-thread ; and therefore must be supplied to the loom by a different agency.
If the pile-threads were worked in among the shoot, in the same way as the warp threads, the fabric would be simply a kind of double silk, but without any kind of pile; the pile-threads are therefore formed into a series of loops, standing up from the surface of the silk ; and by subsequently cutting these loops with a sharp instrument, the pile is produced. Thin brass wires are temporarily woven in among the weft-threads, to assist in forming the loops; and by a delicate cut or scission made with a sharp instrument, the loops are cut and the wires liberated. Striped velvets are produced by some of the pile-threads being uncut.
Cotton is now employed, as well as silk, in the manufacture of velvet. The different varieties of fustian are a kind of cotton-velvet.