A raising card is used in the process of gigging, or producing the nap of cloth. Originally, only

woolen Woolen (American English) or woollen (Commonwealth English) is a type of yarn made from carded wool. Woolen yarn is soft, light, stretchy, and full of air. It is thus a good insulator, and makes a good knitting yarn. Woolen yarn is in contrast t ...

cloth was raised, but now gigging is used on

rayon Rayon, also called viscose and commercialised in some countries as sabra silk or cactus silk, is a semi-synthetic fiber made from natural sources of regenerated cellulose fiber, cellulose, such as wood and related agricultural products. It has t ...

silk Silk is a natural fiber, natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be weaving, woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is most commonly produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoon (silk), c ...

, and

cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

fabrics to create a soft, lustrous nap. Raising is one of the last steps in the finishing process for cloth. It was first done using the dried fruit pod of a

teasel ''Dipsacus'' is a genus of flowering plant in the family Caprifoliaceae. The members of this genus are known as teasel, teazel or teazle. The genus includes about 15 species of tall herbaceous biennial plants (rarely short-lived perennial plants ...

plant, then technology moved on and raising cards were created. A raising card is a brush with metal bristles, similar to hand cards and to the original teasel pod. The process was mechanized during the industrial revolution, and the raising machine (the gig-mill) looks and works much like the large carding machines, in that it has a large main roller with several small ones positioned around it. The small ones rotate quickly, in either the same direction or opposite of that of the cloth. After the raising process, the nap is uneven. In order to gain an even surface, the nap is then sheared, or cut, to the desired height.

References

Textile arts {{Textile-arts-stub