CRINOLINE

Crinoline is a fabric composed of cotton warp, horsehair filling or all cotton yarns. It is sold in varying widths, and is used by tailors and dressmakers in stiffening clothing. It first appeared in 1830. The name crinoline comes the combination of two latin words: crinis (hair) and linum (flax).

Empress Eugenie , wife of Napoleon III. Franz Xavier Winterhalter

Crinoline fashion was invented in France in 1830 and crinoline craze spread throughout the world.It is a cheap cloth of low texture and simple construction, THE DISTINGUISHING FEATURE. being the stiff finish with either a dull or highly glazed face on the cloth. Crinoline, having a horsehair fill­ing, requires a loom of special con­struction to handle the hair, as it is hung in a neat bundle on the end of the loom, the hair being of a uniform length and color, generally black; the mechanism on the loom drawing a strand of hair from the bunch and placing it in the shed formed by the harness. A herring-bone twill weave is used in this grade of the cloth.

Practically the same effect can be produced by using a glazed warp thread and a cotton filling. The glazing process is to take the cotton warp thread, and after charging heavily with a solution of sizing, the yarns are run through su­per-heated  cylinders and rollers, the effect being a highly polished surface to the yarn.
Crinoline composed of regular cotton yarns is stiffened by weighting the fabric with sizing; the weight of the size, in some cases, equals 20 per cent of that of the yarns used in construction.
Crinoline is made generally on the-roller or cam loom of l-20s to l-26s cotton warp and filling yarn, using 25 to 40 ends and picks per inch, the cloth losing about 10 per cent of its width from loom to finished width. The warps are sized 6 to 10 per cent and the woven cloth made to absorb-15 to 20 per cent of its weight, during sizing operation. To finish crinoline means to   stiffen it.