Natural Fibre Crafts and their Worldwide Use

Fibres is a fine thread made of either natural or synthetic material, used to create fabric like cloth or other materials like craft. The common form of fibre art and craft is sewing, macrame, crocheting, quilting, needle point, knitting, rug-making, basket weaving, embroidery, and many more. 

Strands from plants pre-date material woven from yarn turned from cotton. Antiquated people probably utilised regular strands to assemble protected and covered rooftops. Any hairlike raw material obtained directly from an animal, plant, or mineral source and converted into nonwoven textiles such as felt or paper, or into woven cloth after spinning into yarns. A natural fibre can also be characterised as an aggregation of cells having a small diameter in contrast to their length.

Natural fibre is a new breed of reinforcements and supplements for polymer-based products that are made from renewable resources. Because of rising environmental consciousness, the development of natural fibre composite materials or ecologically friendly composites has become a popular issue. Natural fibres are an excellent material that may be used to replace synthetic materials and their products in applications that need less weight and energy. Natural fibre reinforced polymer blends and natural-based resins are increasingly being used to replace conventional synthetic polymer and glass fibre reinforced materials.

People and Natural Fibres:

• Communities living in harsh conditions have responded to adverse conditions by transforming locally available natural fibres into objects for survival
• The bamboo and stick specialties of the North Eastern district of India address a huge storage facility of forms and traditional wisdom
• Several basket forms have evolved, such as Open-weave. baskets of Mizoram and close-weave baskets of Garo Hills in Meghalaya

Animals and Natural Fibres

• Animal fibres are natural fibres that are mostly composed of certain proteins. Silk, hair/fur (including wool), and feathers are examples of natural fibres
• Wool from domestic sheep and silk are the most regularly utilised animal fibres in both the industrial and hand spinning industries
• After vegetable or plant fibres, animal fibres are the most often used natural fibres. They are often made of proteins and can serve as possible reinforcements in composites

Natural Fibres:

• Plant fibres are a form of natural fibre that is derived from plants, as the name implies. To polish the fibre and eventually turn it into a fabric, various extensive processes are carried out, both manually and mechanically. The fibres that are produced have a wide range of applications and uses. Plant fibres are created in different places depending on where the plant is collected
• Fibre can be extracted from a leaf that is fibrous, pliable, strong, and green. If the leaf can be wound around a finger without breaking, it indicates a potential source for making fibre

The beauty of Natural Fibres:

Natural fibre products have certain distinctive qualities.

• Nevertheless, they share a common language of colour, texture, and of belonging to the earth
• The appearance, feel, and the surface of a bamboo basket is different from a plastic one
• A woven surface, similar to a reed mat, could have many shades of white or brown

Worldwide use of Natural Fibres:

• Egypt: Papyrus is a tall blooming reed, and its utilisation is useful and strict and was essential for the mythology of ancient Egypt

• • It had multiple uses – from paper for manuscripts to boats (lifeline of the River Nile)
  • Sails were made from the bark
  • Papyrus bloom was a hallowed image of the Pharaohs

• Pacific area: Eskimos in Alaska and networks in the islands of the Pacific Ocean such as Tonga, Samoa, Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and New Zealand, produced bark-cloth by repeated activity of beating segments of bark of the fig tree. For example, Tapa or the bark-cloth of Tonga is painted using a stencil that is cut from the midrib of the coconut frond. the 
• Africa: The Mbuti Pygmies living in the Ituri timberlands of Equatorial Africa are tracker finders known for their knowledge of plants for multiple uses as food, shelter, medicine, furniture, weapons, poison for hunting, cloth, and dyes.

• • The prairies of South Africa give material to coiled basketry.
  • Wetlands provide reeds and rush formats.
  • Deserts are the home of agaves or delicious prickly plants, jungles for palms, and developed land for straw.
• Europe, North America, and Alaska: Mats are made of grass, rush, and sedge; Baskets are made from split wood, shoots of complex wood trees, willow, wicker, and barks of trees.
• Tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa, and South America: Forests are a rich source of bamboo and cane, which provide bamboo and leaves for building shelters, tools, and implements for horticulture, fishing, and the day by day needs of settled networks.
• Morocco, East Africa, India, Ghana, Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, and islands of the Pacific Ocean: Coiled basketry made of grass fibre or palm leaf fibre is found. Stylized bushels and what’s more headwear are every now and again outlined by strategies, for instance, winding, twining, plaiting.
• Japan: It has an extraordinary reasonableness for bamboo reflected in the types of customary engineering, fences, craft, art, and textiles. It is a specialty custom that qualities the immaculate nature of nature, studies, straightforwardness, and greatness in craftsmanship.

Conclusion

Natural fibres are effective materials that may be used to replace synthetic fibres. The fibres that are generally taken from plants and animals have low moisture resistance, and the incompatibility of the fibres is the fundamental problem. As a result, material qualities have been modified by chemicals of natural fibres, which increase fibre-matrix adhesion and enhance the mechanics of composites.