Silk or satin?

I have been sorting boxes of stuff that I have collected over many years of working with textiles and I came across this pile of shiny fabrics and remembered that I used to go to a shop in Bradford and get bags full of samples, and remnants from sari fabrics, and dispersed them amongst our textile group. I was of course very tempted to get the sewing machine out and start some project or other. But that wouldn’t help with the rest of the sorting, so I didn’t.

So – silk or satin? Both probably. Silk is a raw material; satin is a form of weave that shows more of the warp than usual, giving it a smooth feel and a glossy appearance as it catches the light. So satin can be silk or rayon or cotton (although when cotton is used, the fabric is actually sateen), or polyester. And there will be a range here, although I know quite a bit of it is silk, including bits gathered when I went to Thailand many years ago, and watched silk being spun.

**The word satin is thought to come from the Zaitun, the Arabic name for the Chinese port of Quanzhou where the weave first originated 2,000 years ago. It was kept a secret for a long time and did not reach the West until the 14th century.