We went to a Silk Brocade factory  in Nanjing.  Nanjing is known for brocade, which is like pictures sewn onto fabrics.  The work seems very tedious- one person sits up top on the machine to unravel and feed the silk to the person sitting below.  That person weaves other colors into the main silk to make the design.  They can work for 8 hours and finish a few inches on the design. 

We  then went to a silk embroidery museum in Suzhou.  Women embroider beautiful pictures with silk- some of them were so amazing and full of detail that they looked like a picture taken with a camera.  It is considered to be a dying art because a lot of the younger generations don’t want to learn how to do it because it takes a long time and the money is not good.  We saw one woman working on a piece that she had been working on for over a year.  That is patience!

Next we went to a Silk Factory.  It’s really funny to go to a place and get a five-minute demonstration of something and then led straight to the store.   The joys of traveling in tour groups!  We saw how they take the silkworm cocoons and unravel them so the silk stays in one long strand.  The poor little worms are boiled first so they don’t eat their way out- that would ruin the cocoon, thus ruining the one continuous strand of silk.  They had a lot of cool bedding in the store but I’m not really that into silk.  

The silk being pulled up from each coccon.  I love this picture!