Understanding Triangle

I remember learning about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in school. I understood the implications for worker safety and owner greed, especially those locked doors, but I didn’t – I couldn’t – understand how cloth was so flammable.

Then I started weaving. While all weaving makes dust, weaving 15 yard warps of soft cotton for the baby wraps makes exponentially more dust. After each run of 2 baby wraps I have to do a thorough vacuuming of the entire area. And this spoken by a woman who is about as far from a clean freak as you can get.

You need to really see what I mean. I just cut off the wraps for NS & HM, and here are a few shots of underneath my Macomber loom.

front of the loom

treadles and brake

treadles from the back

When you see that after just 15 yards, and realize that the factory was probably cutting and sewing hundreds of yards of cloth per day, you can see that it was a fire just waiting to happen.