Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Ashenhurst's rule — where it appears

The nineteenth-century rule turning a weave's interlacing count into a maximum sett, which the trade still uses. It is a geometric argument that a bend takes room, and it gets the ordering right while depending on a yarn diameter that has to be assumed.

Named by 3 essays across 2 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

What an interlacing costs. Each weave's interlacing count beside the closest it can be set in the same yarn. The two run opposite ways, because a thread that changes face often has to bend often and a bend takes room.

How close can threads be set

There is a maximum. Push more threads into a cloth than the geometry allows and they simply will not go, and the limit depends on the weave as much as on the yarn.

setting · Sett What an interlacing costs. Each weave's interlacing count beside the closest it can be set in the same yarn. The two run opposite ways, because a thread that changes face often has to bend often and a bend takes room.

Interlacings and firmness

Every time a thread changes face it has to bend, and a bend takes room. That one sentence decides how densely a cloth can be set, how firm it feels, and why the two run in opposite directions.

weaves · Firmness What an interlacing costs. Each weave's interlacing count beside the closest it can be set in the same yarn. The two run opposite ways, because a thread that changes face often has to bend often and a bend takes room.

The weave decides the sett, and two models disagree about it

Ashenhurst's rule and Peirce's geometry both answer how densely a cloth can be set, and for a plain weave they are fifteen per cent apart. Only one of them reaches the other weaves at all, and it is the cruder one.

setting · Sett

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

JammingSettInterlacingCoverFirmnessPeircePeirce's geometryYarn diameter

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