Question

A cotton shirt, before it reaches you, completes a long journey. Elaborate this journey starting from cotton bolls. [5 marks]

Answer 1

The making of a cotton shirt from a cotton boll is a lengthy and time taking process that occurs in the following steps-

• At first, cotton is picked by hand from the cotton bolls and the fibres are separated from the seeds. This process is called ginning of cotton. [1 mark]
• After ginning, the raw cotton fibres are pulled apart and cleaned to remove all dust and impurities from them. [1 mark]
• The next process is combing, in which the cotton fibres are cleaned, straightened, and made into soft, untwisted strands to form a long bundle of fibres called sliver. [1 mark]
• A sliver is then converted into yarn by the process of spinning, which is usually done with the help of hand-operated devices such as charkha, takli or by using modern spinning machines. [1 mark]
• After spinning, the cotton yarn is converted into cotton fabric either by weaving or knitting. [1 mark]

Finally, the cotton fabric is stitched into a cotton shirt.