Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Skew — where it appears

A distortion in which a cloth's rows run straight but slant across its width, quoted as the rise over the width. Finishing leaves it in woven cloth, shrinkage that differs by grain rotates a bias panel into it, and on a patterned cloth it steps at every seam between widths.

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

Shrinkage from wetting, cloth by cloth. The change in each cloth's relaxed construction when its threads swell by 20% across and 1.2% along. Both states are least-energy states of their own constant-thread-length locus, which is the only comparison the locus admits: its minimum is a state at its own sett, so it may be compared with another minimum and not with a quoted construction. Positive is smaller. Every cloth that has a wet state closes up except the cheesecloth, which opens by half a per cent because the fibre's extra hundredth of length outruns the extra crimp a thicker partner costs. What the bars cannot show is the three cloths that are missing, which have no wet state at all.

A garment is cut dry and worn wet

A cutting allowance is one number and the thing it allows for is two, in two directions. Worse: when the two directions differ, a panel cut on the bias does not merely shrink — it rotates, by half a degree for an ordinary poplin, which is nine and a half millimetres of skew across a metre and is invisible to a tape measure.

applied · Cutting 3 widths of cloth at 2% skew and 0% bow, hung level. 3 widths of a 140 cm patterned cloth hung side by side and joined at their selvedges, with three of its pattern rows drawn across each. The cloth's weft is skewed by 2% of the width and bowed by 0%. Hung level, every width starts its rows at the same height, so each seam shows the skew's 28 mm step. The rows' displacement is drawn 8 times its true size against the width. What the drawing cannot show is the ceiling, pole and hem a real hanging is seen against, which is what a tilt is read by.

A skew steps at every seam and a bow at none

A finished cloth's weft rows are seldom square to its selvedges, and on a patterned cloth the weft rows are the pattern rows. A skew — rows straight but slanting — puts its whole rise across every seam where two widths meet: two per cent on a 140 cm width is a 28 mm step, and matching the steps out tips the whole hanging instead, 112 mm across four widths. A bow — rows curving between level selvedges — matches perfectly at every seam and scallops each width in between. A three-millimetre match needs a skew under a quarter of a per cent, and down the seam a lot difference overtakes it.

cloth · Repeat

Named alongside it

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

CuttingAllowanceBiasBowGrainMoistureRelaxationRepeatSeamShearShrinkageSpecification

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