Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Backed cloth — where it appears

A fabric with an extra warp or weft on its reverse, tied in by the face cloth to add weight or warmth. Its layer count must come out at one rather than two, and a stitching plan that fails to do so gives a cloth that separates.

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

A double cloth. Two complete fabrics woven in one repeat, and what happens when a single intersection is turned over. The layer count beside the draft is computed from the matrix drawn, and the census below it is every single-square change tried in turn.

Backed and stitched constructions

A double cloth is two fabrics woven at once, and the check that verifies it says exactly two. Turn one intersection over and it says one — which means one mistake is enough to destroy the construction, and the enumeration says half of them would do it.

weaves · Integrity Where a stitch can hide on a 5-end satin face. The face weave on point paper, with a mark on every gap between two ends at which a stitch would be covered. 15 of the 25 positions in the repeat pass the cover rule, which is 60 per cent of them, and 5 of those can be used at once without two stitches sharing a pick or a gap.

Where a stitch can hide

One reversed intersection turns two cloths into one, and half the intersections in the repeat would do it. Almost none of them may be used — a plain-faced double cloth has nowhere at all to put a stitch, a five-end satin has fifteen places or none depending on which rule is asked, and two satins of the same order differ by a factor of two.

fancy · Double cloth 20 tex yarn in one layer and in 2. Sections across the width, to scale, of a cloth of 20 tex cotton at a cover of 0.8, and of the same yarn per area divided into 2 layers two ways: by count, 10.0 tex at the same sett, and by sett, 20 tex at 1/2 of the ends. Divided by count the cloth is 1.41 times as thick with a cover of 0.57 in each layer; divided by sett it is 2.00 times as thick with a cover of 0.40. At the free end of the yarn's stiffness bracket both are exactly as stiff as the single cloth; at the coherent end the first is 0.50 times as stiff and the second 1.00. What the sections cannot show is crimp, which thickens every layer by an amount the weave decides.

A double cloth is only softer if its yarn is set

A double cloth is sold as weight without stiffness: two light cloths in place of one heavy one. Divide the same yarn into two layers and the cloth is √2 or twice as thick, but at the free end of a yarn's stiffness bracket — where an unset yarn sits — its bending rigidity does not move at all, because it is the number of fibres across the width times the stiffness of one. Only a set yarn makes the double cloth the softer, and stitching the layers together pushes it the other way.

fancy · Double cloth

Named alongside it

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

Double clothStitchingCloth integrityBending rigidityCantileverConnectivityCovering ruleFloatMove numberPlain weaveSatinScatter

All concepts