INFORMATION ABOUT SILK QUILT

Many cocoons are first soaked in boiling water for about half an hour, in order to find the start of the silk filament. Altogether, seven filaments are wound together onto reels to create silk thread. The silk thread is then wound onto reels for drying. Finally the silk thread will go to another factory for final drying. Or it will be made into silk fabric.

For batting, after the cocoon is soaked in hot water, the silk finament is then stretched over a kind of ring, or hoop, to form a “cap.” It takes seven cocoons to make one silk “cap,” or layer, for the quilt.

Finally, four people gather on each side of a square table to pull and stetch out evenly by hand each silk layer or “cap,” until it is the correct size for the finished silk batting. One of these layers of batting is placed on top of another, until the desired thickness of the quilt is achieved. One single large sized “quilt” might require many layers, or “caps,” and could use a total of 700 cocoons to complete!