Three-dimensional thick fabrics are made from a laminate of fabric plies by first inserting pointed rods through the laminate to form rows of holes after which needles are reciprocated through the different holes to pull loops of various yarns through the holes. The loops of yarns in adjacent holes are interlocked to hold the plies together. A guide releasably clamped to each yarn controls tension in the yarn while a doffing point is employed to insure that the needle passes through a loop just formed when penetrating the next hole to insure interlock of the loops. Hollow circular objects are formed by winding a length of fabric a selected number of times around a form, following which the pointed rods are used to form holes in the resulting laminate with the needles and yarns being used to form the interlocking loops through the thickness of the laminate. Where the hollow circular fabric laminate is of varying diameter, the fabric as woven is taken up by a roller of varying diameter proportioned to that of the form, while the fabric itself is varied in density across the width during weaving thereof by interweaving selected ones of the transverse fill yarns with the longitudinal warp yarns across only a selected portion of the width of the fabric.