The diagram depicts the life cycle of the silkworm along with the stages involved in the production of silk cloth.
Life cycle of silkworm includes five stages as discussed below.
The first stage of silkworm life cycle is the female silkworm lays the eggs, which takes ten days to hatch into silkworm larva. It intakes the mulberry leaf as food, and after 4-6 weeks, the larva later produces silk thread. The silk thread takes 3-8 to become a cocoon and finally, after 16 days, a moth takes birth.
The production of silk cloth involves five stages: – select, boil, unwind, twist, and weave.
Initially, cocoons are meticulously selected for quality concerns. The segregated cocoons undergo a boiling process, which leads to extraction of silk thread that ranges between 300m-900m. Furthermore, the thread is twisted and weaved manually or by machine. Lastly, the weaved thread is sent for dye process that is, it is given the desired colour.