--- title: Clothes: T-shirts, jeans and trainers — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Clothes: T-shirts, jeans and trainers», a lesson of the technology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Look at the label in your T-shirt: it may say Made in Bangladesh or Vietnam, because many clothes are designed in one country, se --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/) / Clothes: T-shirts, jeans and trainers # Clothes: T-shirts, jeans and trainers Lesson 5 of the technology course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/0/) — Look at the label in your T-shirt: it may say Made in Bangladesh or Vietnam, because many clothes are designed in one country, sewn in another where wages are lower, and shipped across the sea in containers. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/1/) — A T-shirt starts as fluffy cotton on a plant, which is cleaned, spun into thread, knitted into fabric, dyed, cut and sewn, and much of the sewing is still done by people at very fast machines. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/2/) — Jeans are woven with blue threads one way and white threads the other, which is why the inside is paler than the outside. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/3/) — A sewing machine does not tie knots like your hands: a needle pushes the top thread down and a hook below loops it round a second thread, thousands of times a minute. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/4/) — Cheap clothes have hidden costs: cotton needs lots of water, dye can pollute rivers, and in 2013 a clothes-factory building collapsed in Bangladesh, so people now push for safer factories and fair pay. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/5/) — Cotton fluff from the cotton plant is cleaned, spun into thread, knitted into fabric, dyed, cut and sewn into a T-shirt. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/6/) — Growing the cotton for one T-shirt often takes over two thousand litres of water. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/7/) — Denim for jeans is woven with blue-dyed threads one way and white threads the other, so the inside is paler; jeans are then cut, sewn and often washed to look worn. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/8/) — Metal rivets on jeans were patented (registered as an invention) in 1873 to stop pockets tearing on miners' work trousers. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/9/) — A sewing machine locks each stitch by looping the needle's top thread round a second thread from below; factory machines can make around five thousand stitches a minute, so fingers stay well away from the needle. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/10/) — Many clothes are designed in one country and made in another, such as Bangladesh or Vietnam, where wages are lower; Bangladesh is one of the biggest clothes exporters in the world. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/11/) — In 2013 the Rana Plaza clothes-factory building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing more than a thousand workers, and afterwards safety checks were made stricter. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/12/) — Trainers are built from dozens of pieces: moulded rubber or foam soles and cut or knitted tops, glued and stitched over a foot-shaped block called a last. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/13/) — Knitting machines have hundreds of tiny hooked needles that pull loops of yarn through other loops, the same idea as hand knitting but much faster. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/14/) — Wool comes from sheep that are usually sheared once a year, which, done properly, does not hurt them: it is like a haircut and keeps them cool in summer. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/15/) — Dyes bond to the fibres; the first indigo blue for jeans came from a plant, and dye factories must clean their water because some rivers near them have been badly polluted. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/16/) — A zip has two rows of teeth on cloth tapes, and the slider pushes them together so each tooth hooks into the gap opposite; its modern form dates from about 1913; a zip with a missing tooth keeps coming apart there, and zips should be pulled slowly with skin kept away from the teeth. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/17/) — Clothes given to clothes banks are sorted: good ones are resold, many are shipped abroad to markets, and worn ones become rags or stuffing. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/18/) — T-shirt pictures are printed by pushing ink through a fine mesh screen, one screen for each colour, or by a special printer that sprays ink straight onto the cloth; after many washes and stretches the printed ink layer can crack. - ← previous: [Bottles, cans and recycling](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/4-bottles-cans-and-recycling/) - next →: [Pencils, paper and school things](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/) - ↑ back to [Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/)