Our Tour of Huston Textile Company

Recently, my neighborhood sewing group was given the opportunity to tour Huston Textile Company, a small, family owned business located in Mather, California.  Ryan Huston and his wife Kat started the business in the fall of 2012 and their focus is to manufacture American fabric made from American fibers on American machines.  Their pride of ownership could be seen throughout the entire tour.  Ryan's technical knowledge and ability to bring their old looms and manufacturing equipment back to life is truly remarkable.

Below is the outside of the building with a view of their fiber and dye garden.  Currently they are growing sunflowers and indigo to be used as natural fabric dyes.

A view inside - Where all of the magic happens...

Ryan explaining the spools of thread they use in the weaving process.  He is wearing jeans made from his own manufactured denim, that he sewed and dyed himself. 

 A giant "bobbin" to hold the long lengths of warp weaving threads.

A loom threaded with warp threads.  Warp threads are the threads that run the length of the fabric.

This is an automatic bobbin winder.  Using the spools of thread on the cones on the top of the machine, it automatically winds the bobbins (the wooden stick looking things) that are used inside the shuttle of the weaving machine.  Once a bobbin is wound to it's capacity, it cuts the thread, drops into the bucket below and another bobbin is fed into the track to start the winding process again.  These bobbins create the weft threads (the threads that run right to left) in the weaving process.  It was pretty neat to see this machine in action!  

One of their looms in action.  Hard to see in a still photo, but this machine can produce a yard of canvas in about 4.5 minutes.  It was very loud and we were all required to wear hearing protection while it was running.

Ryan showing us his cutting tool that is used to cut multiple layers (up to 70) of fabric at the same time.  It comes with it's own chain mail glove to product your fingers from the blade.

The 40 foot cutting table.  Wouldn't you just love one of these in your sewing room!  Think of how  many projects you could cut out on this!

A giant wall mural inside the facility.

That's the end of our tour.  A great day had by all!  Thank you Huston Textiles!

Happy sewing everyone!

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