Timeline of clothing and textiles technology

Ancient and Prehistoric

• c. 28000 BC – Sewing needles in use at Kostenki in Russia.
• c. 27000 BC – Impressions of textiles and basketry and nets left on small pieces of hard clay.^[1]
• c. 25000 BC – Venus figurines depicted with clothing.^[1]
• c. 8000 BC – Evidence of flax cultivation in the Near East.^[2]
• c. 6500 BC – Approximate date of Naalebinding examples found in Nahal Hemar cave, Israel. This technique, which uses short separate lengths of thread, predated the invention of knitting (with its continuous lengths of thread) and requires that all of the as-yet unused thread be pulled through the loop in the sewn material.^[3] This requires much greater skill than knitting in order to create a fine product.^[4]
• c. 6000 BC – Evidence of woven textiles used to wrap the dead at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia.^[2]
• c. 5000 BC – Production of linen cloth in Ancient Egypt, along with other bast fibers including rush, reed, palm, and papyrus.^[5]
• 4200 BC – Date of Mesolithic examples of Naalebinding found in Denmark, marking spread of technology to Northern Europe.^[6]
• c. 3000 BC – Breeding of domesticated sheep with a wooly fleece rather than hair in the Near East.^[2]
• c. 2500 BC – The Indus Valley Civilization cultivates cotton in the Indian subcontinent.^[7]
• 200 BC to 200 AD – Approximate date of earliest evidence of "Needle Knitting" in Peru, a form of Naalebinding that preceded local contact with the Spanish.^[8]
• c. 200 AD – Earliest woodblock printing from China. Flowers in three colors on silk.^[9]
• 247 AD – Dura-Europos, a Roman outpost, is destroyed. Excavations of the city discovered early examples of naalebinding fabric.
• 298 AD – Earliest attestation of a foot-powered loom, with a hint that the invention arose at Tarsus.^[10]

Medieval history

• 500 AD – jia xie method for resist dyeing (usually silk) using wood blocks invented in China. An upper and a lower block is made, with carved out compartments opening to the back, fitted with plugs. The cloth, usually folded a number of times, is inserted and clamped between the two blocks. By unplugging the different compartments and filling them with dyes of different colors, a multi-colored pattern can be printed over quite a large area of folded cloth.^[9]
• 500s – Handheld roller cotton gins invented in the Indian subcontinent.^[11]
• 500-1000 – Spinning wheel invented in the Indian subcontinent.^[12]
• 600s – Oldest samples of cloth printed by woodblock printing from Egypt.
• 1000s – Finely decorated examples of cotton socks made by true knitting using continuous thread appear in Egypt.^[4]
• 1000s – The earliest clear illustrations of the spinning wheel come from the Islamic world.^[13]
• 1100s-1300s – Dual-roller cotton gins appear in India and China.^[14]
• 1275 – Approximate date of a silk burial cushion knit in two colors found in the tomb of Spanish royalty.
• 1200s-1300s – The worm gear roller cotton gin invented in the Indian subcontinent during the early Delhi Sultanate era.^[15]
• 1493 – The first available reference to lace is in a will by one of the ruling Milanese Sforza family.^[16]
• 1400s-1500s – The incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared in the Indian subcontinent some time during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire.^[17]
• 1562 – Date of first example of use of the purl stitch, from a tomb in Toledo, Spain, which allows knitting of panels of material. Previously material had to be knitted in the round (in a tubular form) and cut open.
• 1589 – William Lee invents stocking frame, the first but hand-operated weft knitting machine.

Modern era