While the first diagram illustrates a series of changes a silkworm undergoes from the

beginning of its life till its maturity, the second represents the way in which silk cloth is
manufactured from silkworm’s cocoon.

Overall, there are four stages in a silkworm’s life cycle, beginning with the egg being laid and
culminating in the presence of a fully-formed moth. However, the manufacturing of silk
cloth involves five steps, starting with selecting cocoons and finishing with dying the silk
cloth.

The life cycle of a silkworm begins when the female successfully lays eggs on its chosen leaf.
It takes ten days for the eggs to evolve into larvae, which feed on mulberry leaves as the
food source to grow. As they become bigger, the larvae constantly spin a cocoon of silk
threads around themselves, which needs four to six weeks for the body part – excluding the
head - to be covered by the threads and another three to eight days for the whole body.
After sixteen days staying inside the cocoon, the larvae will break the shelves, revealing
their wings and developed bodies. They now become moths, which are sexually mature and
ready to produce offspring of their own. The process repeats by the reproduction of the
silkworm.

Taking into account of this life cycle, workers in silk cloth producing units intervene in the
silkworm’ growth stage by meticulously observing the cocoons to choose the perfect,
untorn ones for silk cloth manufacturing. Those selected are boiled in water. Once finished,
they are unwound into a single thread that may stay 300 to 900 meters in length. Following
this, the intermediate product is twisted and either dyed forthwith or weaved, and it will
ultimately undertake the dyeing process.