In Beijing, we went to a silk factory. The factory was filled with silk almost everywhere we looked. We learned how silk gets from the cocoon to things made of silk.
Silk starts with silk worms. Here they are eating mulberry leaves. That's their favorite thing to eat!
This is a picture of silk cocoons that the worms spin to become moths. The worms spin a cocoon just like other caterpillars when they get ready to turn into butterflies or moths, except these cocoons are silk!
When the people want to make silk fabric, they put the cocoons in some liquid and stir it around with a brush until they're soaked and soggy.
This is what they look like after you dunk them in liquid and stir them around.
Next, they stretch the silk out over a frame to dry.
Then you can take the silk strands and spin it into thread on a loom. This is a loom we saw at the silk factory.
You can also stretch the silk to make things like quilts or cushions for chairs and couches. They let us stretch many layers of silk to make a quilt for a bed. It is small here.
As we all started pulling at the same time, it got bigger and fit with the rest so it made a puffy quilt that would be comfortable to sleep on.
Can you imagine how many cocoons it would take to make a quilt like that?!
The silk factory was one of the most interesting places I can remember on our trip to China.
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