Alex I Askaroff

Alex has spent a lifetime in the sewing industry and is considered one of the foremost experts of pioneering machines and their inventors. He has written extensively for trade magazines, radio, television, books and publications world wide.

The History of Cotton

Have you ever asked yourself how old is cotton? 

Well let me tell you. Scientists in Mexico found pieces of cotton cloth that were at least 7,000 years old. They also found that the cotton all those years ago was very similar to that grown today.

Wild Cotton Bud

In Pakistan, cotton was being woven into cloth around 5,000 years ago.

Cleopatra wore the finest cotton grown in the Egyptian’s Nile valley, not while soaking in asses milk though!

The first spinning wheel was thought to have originated in India about 500 years before Jesus was born. from that point on cloth was available to all.

Reels of thread in various forms soon followed which allowed the fabric to be joined.

Arab merchants brought cotton to Europe about 800 A.D and when Columbus bumped into a big lump of land and called it America in 1492, he found cotton already growing.

Cotton seeds are believed to have been planted in Florida around 1556 and in Virginia in 1607. 

By 1616, colonists were growing cotton along the James River in Virginia.

By the 1450's, cotton was known throughout the world.

Cotton was first spun by machinery in England in 1730.

You can see more on my Coats and Clarke history at the end of the page. Sewing machine threads. 

Cotton played an important part in the American Civil war and was a precious resource. History of sewing threads.

A Massachusetts man, Eli Whitney, secured a patent on the cotton gin in 1793. Though patent  records show that the first cotton gin could have been built by Noah Homes two years before Whitney’s patent was filed. 

The cotton gin, where we get the abbreviation of en--gine, could work 10 times faster than hand.The modern world had arrived.

The mechanised gin, not the liquid stuff boys! Made it possible to supply large quantities of cotton fibre to the expanding the textile industry. That in turn made it possible to obtain cheaper clothing. Now we could all wear different clothes instead of the same dirty ones.

Today cotton is still one of the finest, natural and most durable of materials, even though it does crease like crazy.

There is a lot more of the history of cotton in relation to the sewing machine in my history of sewing machine threads. Simply click on the Campbell's thread picture below.

Campbell's Irish linen thread was made in Belfast.

Campbell's sewing machine thread was linen not cotton but worked well in thicker fabrics.

Well that's all folks, I did say a brief history...

For more information about British thread history click on the Coats badge or click on the links below.

Fancy a funny read: Ena Wilf  & The One-Armed Machinist

A brilliant slice of 1940's life: Spies & Spitfires

Alex's stories are now available to keep. Click on the picture for more information.

 Home            Index                Books

CONTACT: alexsussex@aol.com  Copyright ©  

  Skylark Country