o carried all
the threads back and forth on the large warping-bars; this was a
difficult task; only the brightest negro women were warpers. The
thread had been dyed before spooling and the vari-colored
cob-spools could be arranged to make stripes lengthwise of the
cloth; and the hanks had also been dipped in a boiling-hot sizing
made of meal and water. The warp-threads were carefully taken from
the bars and rolled upon the wooden beam of the loom, the ends
passed through the sley and tied. The weaver then began her work.
The thread for the filling (called the woof by the negroes) was
reeled from the hank on the winding-blades, upon small canes about
four inches long which, when full, were placed in the wooden
shuttles. These women spun and wove all the clothing worn by the
negroes on the plantation; cotton cloth for women and men in the
summer time; and jeans for the men; linsey-woolsey for the women
and children for winter. All were well clothed. The women taught us
to spin, but the weavers were cross and would not let us touch the
loom, for they said we broke the threads in the warp. My
grandmother never interfered with them when they were careful in
their work. We would say, 'Please make Aunt Rhody let me weave!'
She answered, 'No, she is managing the loom; if she is willing,
very well; if not, you must not worry her.' We thought it great fun
to try to weave, but generally had to pay Aunt Rhody for our
meddling by giving her cake, ribbons, or candy."

The colonists were constantly trying to find new materials for spinning,
and also used many makeshifts. Parkman, in his _Old Regime_, tells that
in the year 1704, when a ship was lost that was to bring cloth and wool
to Quebec, a Madame de Repentigny, one of the aristocrats of the
French-Canadian colony, spun and wove coarse blankets of nettle and
linden bark. Similar experiments were made by the English colonists.
Coarse thread was spun out of nettle-fibre by pioneers in western New
York. Levi Beardsley, in his _Reminiscences_, tells of his mother at the
close of the last century, in her frontier home at Richfield Springs,
weaving bags and coarse garments from the nettles which grew so rankly
everywhere in that vicinity. Deer hair and even cow's hair was collected
from the tanners, spun with some wool, and woven into a sort of felted
blanket.

Silk-grass