Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Block — where it appears

The unit a figured design is drawn in: a square of threads carrying one weave, which a profile draft names and a drawdown expands. It is the design's own resolution, it is at least one repeat of every weave in the cloth, and a profile draft carries the number of blocks without carrying how many threads each holds.

Named by 4 essays across 3 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

The step between a figure and its ground. Three figures on a plain ground, all in one sheeting's threads at its own setts. A thread presses on the thread it crosses only where it turns, and it turns at its interlacings — so the pressing a region receives per unit area is the contact force at one turn times the turns per unit area, and the second factor is a property of the matrix exactly. A five-end satin turns two fifths as often as a plain weave, is pressed two fifths as hard, flattens less, and stands 55 µm proud of it. What the rows cannot show is that both regions are given a plain weave's weave angle: a satin's crimp is genuinely smaller and its turns genuinely gentler, so the real step is larger than this, by an amount not computed here.

A figured cloth has a step in its surface

A damask is one cloth in one set of threads at one sett, and it is not flat. A thread presses on the thread it crosses only where it turns, so a region that turns less often is pressed less often, flattens less and stands thicker — and the step is a ratio of interlacing rates, read off the matrix with no yarn property in it.

pattern · Blocks A two-layer interchange, 1 block by 2. A two-layer cloth whose layers change places from block to block, drawn as the draft and as the section a weaver would draw. Each block is one repeat of the stack, 4 picks by 4 ends, and the design has 2 boundaries in it. Every strand in the draft is coloured by the cloth this site's criterion puts it in, and there is one colour, because there is one cloth — with no intersection reversed anywhere in the repeat. A stitch joins two layers at a point; an interchange joins them along a line, and the line is the design's own block boundary rather than anything added to it. The section below is schematic: it draws each ply as a line rather than as its threads, because what has to be seen is that the two lines cross, and a section at thread level over 2 blocks is a picture nobody can count.

An interchange joins what a stitch would have had to

The rung below spent a whole essay on where a stitch may be put in a double cloth, and found face weaves with nowhere to put one at all. A design in which the two layers change places from block to block needs no stitch anywhere: the boundary is the join. Two blocks side by side make one cloth with not a single intersection reversed, and the same two blocks with no boundary between them make two.

fancy · Double cloth What a profile draft can reach at 4 by 4. The share of the 22,874 interlacing 4-by-4 drafts that a profile draft can express, at two block sizes. A profile is a grid of blocks each carrying a figure weave or a ground weave, so its image is every draft reachable by any choice of the two weaves and any assignment — which is enumerated here rather than argued: 4,096 combinations at the larger block, and the distinct results counted. With two-by-two blocks it reaches 306 drafts, which is 1.34 per cent. With one-by-one blocks the profile is the draft and it reaches all of them, which is the control. What the bars cannot show is that the reachable drafts are the useful ones: every figured cloth ever woven is in the small set, and the notation is narrow because designs are.

A profile draft is a notation whose alphabet is weaves

The rung below measured four notations for a single weave and left open the notations for something larger. A profile draft is the first of them: a grid of blocks, each carrying a figure weave or a ground weave. Its image is enumerable and it is tiny — every pair of two-by-two weaves against every assignment of two-by-two blocks reaches 306 of the 22,874 interlacing four-by-four drafts, which is 1.34 per cent. And the 306 are the ones anybody weaves.

cloth · Notation The beams a disc 12 blocks across needs, column by column. A disc 12 blocks across, 12 blocks by 12, figure shaded, with the beam feeding each column of ends written above it, for a figure floating 8 on a ground floating 1, whose warp crimps are 14.15 per cent apart, at 4 mm blocks over a 100 m piece with 1.2 mm of slack. It has 4 distinct columns and 4 distinct shares of the repeat in figure, and needs 4 beams. What the grid cannot show is the cloth's own crimp interchange, which would move tension between the columns instead.

A figured warp needs a beam for every share of its figure

Figure and ground take up warp at different rates, so a figured cloth on one beam is bounded in how long its figure may run, and a second beam is the obvious escape. It escapes only for ends that live wholly in one region. An end that crosses the figure for part of the repeat consumes warp at its own rate, and two ends can share a beam only if they spend the same share of the repeat in the figure and never drift a slack apart inside it. So a round figure twelve blocks across needs four beams, ninety-six blocks across needs twenty-nine, and any crimp difference at all — a third of a per cent will do — costs every one of them over a piece.

fancy · Jacquard

Named alongside it

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

DamaskFigure and groundPoint paperBeamCensusCloth integrityCloth thicknessCompression energyConnectivityContact forceCrimpDouble cloth

All concepts