Suzhou Silk Museum

Suzhou is one of the most famous cities in China for silk. Today we decided to adventure out to see the silk museum. After living more than a year in Suzhou, I would finally get to see how silk is created. The museum goes through the process from the silk worm to the actual silk being pulled for quilts or made into fabric with patterns.

The first stage of course starts with the a prized grayish-white moth. This moth lays up to 500 eggs which will hatch in the spring. When they hatch, they are brought Mulberry leaves to eat. They will eat for six weeks, before they are ready to start to build cocoons.

Once the cocoon is made, the workers must prevent it from becoming a moth. It would take about two weeks for the chrysalis or pupa to develop into a moth. First the cocoons are sorted between good cocoons and bad cocoons. I observed the sorting, but I do not know what the criteria was for sorting these cocoons. Then to prevent the metamorphosis from happening, they expose the chrysalis to heat by boiling it and killing it before it has a chance to metamorphose.

Once it is dead, the process of silk reeling begins. The cocoons are manually brushed and picked from one end to begin the reeling process.

Once this process is complete, the raw silk goes to a re-reeling process. This re-reeling process is used to eliminate moisture and properly dry the silk while retaining the elasticity, strength, and elongation rate. Otherwise known as meeting customer expectations.

After this process, the silk can be sent anywhere to make clothes or any other item which uses silk.

There were no signs for me to understand the quilting process, so I will make one up with the knowledge I gained from the first part of the silk museum. If I am wrong 没关系！Well, first as stated above, the cocoon is boiled to prevent the chrysalis from becoming a moth. Then, the cocoon is opened up and stretched over a parabolic structure to dry. After it has dried, many layers are stretched out over one another forming the quilt.

The final part of the museum allows a little bit of "hands on" experience. Below my mother and Isaac help stretch one of the layers of silk to help form the quilt.

I hope all of you enjoyed the silk museum and were able to stay awake and read this blog entry.