“Is the shirt you’re wearing knit or woven?”
William Barefoot believes being able to answer this question is fundamental to the basics of textile weaving, and asked it regularly to his students at the Weaving Lab.
After 25 years of managing the Weaving Lab at Wilson College of Textiles, Barefoot is hanging up his safety glasses for good. The Weaving Lab is a part of the Zeis Textile Extension, which provides training and certification in textiles and programs for improvement and innovation. It serves the textile industry’s prototyping and pilot production needs across its laboratories.
From Industry to Education
Barefoot started off his career by following the path of several family members and working for Burlington Industries in Raeford, North Carolina. He worked in the menswear division in the weaving area and has experience in just about every job at the weave plant. After 16 years in the industry, a desire for becoming an educator and the stability of a state government job led him to apply to the Weaving Lab – which ended up becoming his home for the rest of his career.
The Weaving Lab performs work for outside clients and is open for Textiles students to learn about the basics of weaving. It also serves as a space for students to create prototypes for capstone and design projects. Barefoot’s favorite part of his job was working with the students.
“My heart and soul is with the students,” Barefoot says. “I put effort into all my outside projects as well, and I’ve got a lot of good clients, but I’d rather focus more on the education side. I want to make sure students understand how a woven piece of fabric is put together with warp and filling yarns and so forth.”
He notes that while his time in the industry focused mostly on apparel, the Wilson College introduced him to many new sides of textiles. His path to education expanded his knowledge as well.
“Before working at Wilson, I didn’t know anything about the nonwoven side,” Barefoot says. “But now I’ve worked with medical textiles and have seen some really cool stuff.”
His passion for teaching was evident to everyone around him and drew people in to learn from him.
“He had respect from the industry, so he always had a workload. But he always had time for people, he always had time for the next question,” Andre West, Director of Zeis Textile Extension, says. “He was always educating people, which is very rare because we have a lot of tours that go through the labs all the time. Any tours that I get down there, he’s always there to give his time, to give his knowledge back to the person – explain what weaving is, and the expertise needed to to run a lab full of all different types of weaving equipment.”
Plans for the Future
A true Southerner, Barefoot sees plenty of fishing in his future at his second home on the Carolina coast. He wants to spend as much time with his family and loved ones as possible, and maybe even see some of his fellow coworkers down at the dock with him.
“I really enjoy my job, but it’s just come to a time where I think I need to enjoy life a little bit,” Barefoot says.
He promises he won’t be a stranger, and will definitely come back to visit and see some of his students graduate. He will miss teaching, but knows that he’s made a difference and that’s enough for him.
“I’ve trained a lot of students to go out in the workforce,” Barefoot says. “Wherever they go in industry, I made sure they’re prepared for the world out there, and that they could tell the difference between a woven and a knit.”
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