About JUTE (the main fabric I use)

Jute is a long, rough, shiny bast fiber that can be turned into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from flowering plants in the genus Corchorus, of the mallow family Malvaceae.

Jute is one of the most affordable natural fibers and second only to cotton in the amount produced and variety of uses. The industrial term for jute fiber is raw jute.

Jute has been used for making textiles in the Indus valley civilization since the 3rd millennium BC.

The bulk of the jute trade is centered in South Asia, with India and Bangladesh as the primary producers. The majority of jute is used for durable and sustainable packaging, such as burlap sacks. Its production and usage declined as disposable plastic packaging become common, but this trend begun to revers as merchants and even nations phase out or ban single-use plastics.

The jute plant needs plain alluvial soil and standing water. During the monsoon season, the monsoon climate offers a warm and wet environment which is suitable for growing jute. 

For centuries, jute has been a part of the culture of Bangladesh and some parts of West Bengal and Assam. The British started trading in jute during 17th century. British jute barons grew rich by processing jute and selling manufactured products made from it. Dundee Jute Barons and the British East India Company set up many jute mills in Bengal, and by 1895 jute industries in Bengal overtook the Scottish jute trade. 

Due to its coarse and tough texture, jute could initially only be processed by hand, until someone in Dundee discovered that treating it with whale oil made it machine processable.

The jute fiber comes from the stem and ribbon of the jute plant. The fibers are first extracted by ratting, a process in which jute stems are bundled together and immersed in slow running water. There are two types of ratting: stem and ribbon. After the ratting process, stripping begins. Women and children usually do this job. In the stripping process, workers scrape off non-fibrous matter, then dig in and grab the fibers from within the jute stem. 

Jute is a rain-fed crop with little need for fertilizer or pesticides, in contrast to cotton's heavy requirements.

Jute was historically used in traditional textile machinery because jute fibers contain cellulose (vegetal fiber) and lignin (wood fiber). Later several industries, such as automotives, pulp and paper, furniture, and bedding industries, started to use jute and its allied fibers with their non-woven and composite technology to manufacture nonwoven fabric, technical textiles and composites.

Jute packaging is sometimes used as an environmentally friendly substitute for plastic.

Jute has been used as a home textile due to its static and color-and light-fast properties, as well as its strength, durability, UV protection, sound and heath insulation and low thermal conductivity.

Fabrics made of jute are carbon neutral and biodegradable, which make jute a candidate material for high performance technical textiles.

As global concern over forest destruction increases, jute may begin to replace wood as a primary pulp ingredient.

 

Source of info: Wikipedia