Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Seamless — where it appears

Knitted in the round as a tube, so that a garment or a part of one needs no sewn seam. Its circumference is its needle count times its wale spacing, and its shaping has to be done by changing the loop, dropping needles or knitting short rows.

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

How far a tube can be tapered by its loop. The same 10 wales by 10 courses of plain knit at the two ends of the usable loop range for a 20 tex yarn — 3.44 mm at the loose end and 2.80 mm at the tight one — drawn at a common scale in centimetres. On 240 needles the circumference falls from 192.0 cm to 156.0 cm, a taper of 18.8 per cent, and the fabric becomes 1.51 times as dense.

A tube can only be shaped by its loop

On a circular machine the needle count is the cylinder, so a seamless tube's circumference is its wale count times its wale spacing — and the wale spacing is the loop length over one constant. The loop is the only free quantity, the yarn bounds it at both ends, and what is left is a taper of 18.8 per cent bought at the price of a fabric half again as dense.

knits · Shaping A short-row heel on 64 needles, laid flat. The 32 heel stitches of a 64-needle sock, each column drawn as the courses it was worked in during the short rows: nought at the heel's two edges, rising by four courses a stitch to 42 across the 11 stitches left at the turn. The cells are drawn at the knit's own aspect, a wale 1.2791 times as wide as a course is tall. The instep's 32 columns beside it are worked in none of the short rows. Down the back line the extra length turns the tube through 92.4 degrees, and the whole trapezoid is 65.6 per cent of the fabric a true bend of that angle would need.

A heel turns a right angle because of the loop

A sock's heel is knitted in short rows on half the needles until a third are left, then back out again. Down the back line that adds a length of courses, and a tube's back line longer than its front by that much has turned through π times two thirds over the loop's own aspect — 93.8 degrees, on any needle count, in any yarn. The trade's third is the loop's shape in disguise. What the rule does not do is make a bend: the heel supplies two thirds of the fabric a true right angle needs, and every missing stitch is on its sides.

knits · Shaping

Named alongside it

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

Munden constantsShapingTubeWaleCircular knittingCourseHeelLoop aspectLoop lengthNeedle countShort-rowStitch density

All concepts