Session 1: ​Introduction: How Nylon is Made and Its History

The world of nylon is vast and varied. For instance, when I say nylon, what do you think of? Panty hose or toothbrush bristles? Those are certainly not uncommon, but there are so many different uses of nylon in the world, including parachutes and super strong cord, or car parts and mechanical gears. It's a plastic and it can be made into almost anything, but it can also be made into fabric. There are thousands of different types of nylon fabrics in the world. You may see nylon running shorts such as these, or a hat and other forms of outer wear, as well as super strong travel cases. I'm here to show you all the different types of nylon fabric out there, how to tackle them and conquer their fraying edges that I'm sure are annoying, and I'm sure you're aware of them, and the slippery surfaces that can get in the way. I'll teach you how to conquer those with grace and aplomb, and when we're finished, you'll have this very fancy travel purse, it has three different zippers and is made entirely of nylon. So, all that and more will be coming up in this class. What specifically are we going to learn though? First I'm gonna teach you how nylon is made and give you a brief history lesson about it. Then we'll discuss all the different types of nylon fabric that I could get my hands on, and their uses. We'll move on from there to discuss caring for your nylon, and the tools that you're gonna want to use while you're working with nylon. I'll provide some sewing tips that include how to conquer those slippery surfaces and, you know, fraying edges. Then we'll work on seam finishes that are specifically great for working with a couple of different types of nylon, and actually should conquer most forms of the fabric. Lastly, we'll put all of those skills to good use as we make this travel purse that's perfect and perfectly sized to wear cross body as you go on your next adventure. So, let's begin with discussing how nylon is made. Nylon is a polyamide, which means that it's a synthetic fabric, or a manmade fabric or plastic. How exactly is it made? Well you might not be doing this yourself at home in your kitchen, but let me give you a quick overview. First you take carbon-based chemicals such as coal or petroleum, and you place them in an autoclave. An autoclave is a lot like a pressure cooker or a tea kettle. It's gonna heat those chemicals up under pressure, and while they're inside they're gonna give off water and condense into a sheet of plastic, and that plastic is nylon. You'll pull that out and break it up into chips. Now why would you break it into chips once you went through all that trouble to make it? It's so that you can melt it down into other forms. We're specifically worried about fabric, so, if you're gonna be making fabric out of nylon chips, you're gonna go ahead and melt those down, and press them through a spinneret. Envision a shower head, but all the holes are different shapes, if you wanted to make certain types of nylon you might have triangular shaped holes or cross shaped holes, T shaped holes or diamonds, any shape out there, they've used it to make a nylon thread. You're gonna melt those chips, as I said, push it through the spinneret, and out the other side will come these very thin threads. Those threads can then be woven or knit into a nylon. Specifically, if you take individual threads that come out of the spinneret, you're gonna make panty hose because they're very thin and gossamer and translucent. Now, you might wanna make a thicker form of nylon, such as Cordura, to make some luggage. In that case, you're gonna take those very thin threads that you've just pushed through the spinneret, you're gonna spin them together and make a thick, thick kind of almost rope, or just a thicker thread or a yarn if you wanna think of it that way, that then you would weave or knit into the fabric, and once you have that, you're ready to go, you can cut out your pieces, you can dye it any color, you can just go to town sewing it. So that's basically how nylon is made. Now let's go over the history of nylon, and this is a very brief overview, but, in 1935, Wallace Carothers was working for the DuPont Company as a scientist, and he discovered how to make nylon. In 1938, it found one of its very first commercial purposes, which were toothbrush bristles. Those bristles were soft enough to use on your gums without causing bleeding, and it was a really easy way to make a toothbrush as opposed to say, horse hair or some other form of hair on your toothbrush. In 1939, nylon debuted at the world's fair. It was one of DuPont's fantastic plastics, and when it came out, the military industry discovered it and started putting it to great use, because as I'm sure you're aware, World War II was on the forefront. That's when it started being made into parachutes because silk was scarce, it was very hard to get silk during that time period, and so they made parachutes out of it, they discovered that they could weave it specifically into ballistic form and make flak jackets, they also made tires, which were super strong and ready to roll, and from that form in the military complex, it expanded to the home front, where, as there was a silk scarcity, they started making the panty hose. Nylon created some of the first affordable panty hose that all different classes could afford, and it, once the war ended, it exploded from there. Now you're gonna find nylon in your carpets, in your tires, in your clothing and your luggage, it's everywhere, you probably touch three or four different types of nylon every single day, possibly more, depending on your job. So as you can see, there are a lot of different types of nylon in the world. We're gonna be working with several different forms, and I'm excited to show them to you. I'm gonna go ahead and get ready to show you all the different types of nylon I gathered up. I'm sure there are millions more out in the world, but I'll give you an idea of which ones should be used for. I'm gonna set up for that in our next session, so stay tuned.