Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Handedness — where it appears

The way a twill's diagonal or a yarn's twist runs, named S or Z, or left and right hand. A mirror changes it and nothing else in the draft, yet the two hands can look different in cloth, because a yarn's surface fibres lie across the diagonal of one and along the other.

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

The 2/2 twill both ways round. The same twill stepped one end to the right and one end to the left. Every quantity the matrix can produce is identical for the two, so the direction is real in the cloth and invisible in the arithmetic.

Twill direction, and how it is named

The two twills are mirror images, and every quantity the matrix can produce is identical for both. What separates them is the yarn, which has a handedness of its own — and the angle, which is forty-five degrees only in a square-set cloth.

weaves · Foundation weaves The 2/1/2/3 twill and its own back. The 2/1/2/3 twill on 8 ends drawn on point paper, face and back, with warp up shaded. The back is every cell's face changed and the ends read from the other side, so its diagonal runs the other way. The warp floats on the face are 2, 2 and on the back 3, 1. This twill is not reversible. The matrix has no yarn in it, so what cannot be shown is how each face reads when a yarn's twist lies with one diagonal and across the other.

A balanced twill need not have two equal faces

Up to six ends, a twill with as much warp as weft on its face is the same cloth on both sides, and the trade's word for one has done duty for the other. At eight ends the two part: 2/1/2/3 shows warp floats of two and two on one face and three and one on the other. By eighteen ends only one balanced twill in ten is reversible, because half a reversible twill's word fixes the rest. Counting the motions properly also moves the count of twills itself, and shows that no twill is ever the same on both faces in a real yarn.

weaves · Foundation weaves

Named alongside it

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

Twill directionCensusDenimEquivalenceFloat lengthTwillTwill angleYarn twist

All concepts