Artisans Angkor
When the worms have grown enough, they are put in baskets. From there, they will spin their cocoons in five days and will produce about three hundreds meters of silk each. The cocoons are then put in sunlight to avoid them undergoing their metamorphosis into mature moths. However, 20% of them reach the breeding process and the female moths will lay and hatch its eggs within nine to twelve days.
The cocoons are soaked in hot water in order to soften the sericin (also known as silk gum) which coat the fibres and stick the cocoons together. Silk threads are then unwound and reeled together to produce a single thread. Weavers at Angkor Silk Farm make both raw silk and fine silk that do not have the same texture at all. Sericin has not been completely removed from raw silk threads, which will give a rougher texture to the fabric at the end.
Chrysiridia rhipheus
After completing all but its last moult, the caterpillar spins a cocoon out of silk. The cocoon can be in the tree crown or between two leaves, but is most often near the ground, between moss and bark. It is an open network cocoon with large and irregular mesh. In the warm season, the cocoon takes about 10 hours to spin, the metamorphosis takes place about 29 hours later and lasts about 6 minutes. These durations are slightly longer in the cold season. The chrysalis stage lasts 17 days in November, the warmest month, and 23 days in July, the coldest month. Five to six days before eclosion, the motifs of the wings start to become visible. The moth emerges during the night or in low light, by splitting the pupal case from the top. Once out of the pupal exuvia (the pupal exoskeleton), the moth finds a horizontal surface, from which it suspends itself by its four anterior legs. The wings are deployed in about 10 minutes, by pumping haemolymph into the wing veins. The moth then beats them a few times, waits 45 minutes to let them harden, then beats them lightly again. The moth finally takes flight between one-and-a-half and two hours later.