It is in the name of Fab Fabrics and Halloween that I’m trying to put my fear of spiders on the back burner so I can tell you about the spookiest natural fiber I’ve ever heard of: spider silk.
This is not a fabric that’s available commercially, but it did feel like it was worth a mention over here. According to Wired: It takes about 14,000 female golden orb spiders to yield an ounce of the silk. It took collecting the spiders and harnessing them to the extraction machine (which they say does not harm the creatures) to produce the 11 x 4 foot piece of cloth and over one million spiders. A million spiders! That is my nightmare! Right, but setting my arachnophobia aside, spider silk is pretty amazing stuff. Textile expert Simon Peers, who co-led the spider silk project says: So what do you guys think? Is spider silk an eco fabric or just my nightmare fuel?
