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40d:Clothing industry

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This article is a quick guide to running a self-sufficient clothing industry.

Plants or Silk

Requires: A farm, a farmer, and the appropriate seeds
and/or: A weaver, a loom, and spider webs

There are six crops that you can grow that are used in the clothing industry (2 for cloth, 4 for dyes), and three types of raw silk that can be harvested with varying degrees of difficulty. Above-ground crops can be gathered rather than farmed, if you don't mind having an unpredictable harvest. If you are lucky enough to have spiders on your map, or unlucky enough to have giant cave spiders on your map, you can produce silk cloth in addition to plant fiber cloth. If you would prefer not to worry about creating the raw materials, you can usually trade for thread and dyes.

Under ground crops
Above ground crops
Silk

Thread

Requires: A farmer's workshop, a thresher, and the appropriate plant
and/or: A weaver, a loom, and spider webs

To create thread from harvested plants, you must query the farmer's workshop and order it to process the pig tails and/or rope reed. Creating thread from silk is somewhat easier: if there are spider webs available on your map, dwarves with the weaving labor enabled will gather the webs and automatically spin them into silk thread. You may want to make sure that your dwarves are not trying to gather webs from a giant cave spider without a military escort -- check the units list to see if any non-vermin spiders are listed.

Cloth

Requires: A loom, a weaver, and spider webs or plant fiber thread

By default any thread produced will be automatically woven at the loom. Plant fibers will be queued for weaving into cloth as soon as they are processed at the farmer's workshop. Dwarves will automatically gather spider silk if it's available, spin it into silk thread, and this thread will also be automatically woven into silk cloth. If you prefer to create dyed cloth by dyeing the thread beforehand, you may want to Set Workshop Orders so that dwarves only weave dyed thread. Cloth can still be dyed after weaving.

Clothes

Requires: A clothier's shop, a clothier, and some cloth

Once the cloth is ready you can sew it into clothes, either for trading or for your own dwarves to wear. The clothier's shop is also where you can decorate cloth items with a sewn image. Decorating an imported item (e.g. narrow goblin clothing) makes it local for purposes of trade offerings, and depending on the quality of the decoration can add significant value to an item. Ropes and bags are all also produced at the clothier's shop. Bags are critical to establishing a glass industry.

Dyeing

Dyeing is very useful because it adds to the value of the finished clothes. You can dye either thread or cloth to increase its value. Cloth created from dyed thread cannot be dyed.

Creating dye

Requires: A millstone or quern, a miller, an empty bag, and the appropriate plant

Once you have harvested or bought the plants, you can mill them into dye.

Using dye

Requires: A dyer's shop, a dyer, and some dye

Having the dye, you can dip the clothes or thread into it to increase its value.

Summary

Required worker / labor
Required buildings

Sample Industry Plan

If your intent is to produce equal volumes of thread and dye (so that all of your thread can be dyed) then you could establish a year-round growing cycle with two equally-sized plots above and below ground as follows:

Spring Summer Autumn Winter
Underground Dimple cup Pig tail Pig tail Dimple cup
Above ground Rope reed Sliver barb Blade weed Rope reed

This will give you one cloth crop and one dye crop each harvest. This is not the only way to do it, but it is an example of a growing plan that will keep a miller, a thresher, a dyer, a weaver, and some growers employed evenly year-round and provide high-value materials for any tailors in your fort. If you have access to silk on your map, you may prefer to substitute a food crop for one of the fiber crops, or brew the excess pig tail into dwarven ale.

Large fields, fertilizer, and skilled growers will produce more raw materials; skilled craftsdwarves will use up the materials faster. Choose the largest plot size you can sustainably plant and harvest, because eventually your craftsdwarves will be able to go through materials faster than you can grow them and you'll find yourself queueing up new orders each season. To boost profits, set your workshop orders to use only dyed thread, leave out hide root from your growing plan because of its lower item value, and keep the supply channels full of plant products so that you've always got materials to support standing (repeat) work orders.



See Also