Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Tex — where it appears

Grams per thousand metres, the direct count system and the one this collection computes in. Every other system converts to it exactly, and a tex figure is quoted at standard regain so it already has some water in it.

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

Six ways of saying how fine a yarn is. The same four yarns written in six count systems, all placed on one axis of tex. A direct system states mass per unit length and rises as the yarn coarsens; an indirect one states length per unit mass and falls. Both kinds are in daily use and neither says which it is.

The yarn count systems, and why there are several

Half the ways of saying how fine a yarn is get bigger as it gets finer and half get smaller. That is not carelessness — and one of the constants buried in the oldest rule of thumb turns out to be a measurement nobody wrote down.

setting · Count Z twist at 800 turns per metre. A 20 tex cotton yarn, 0.167 mm across, with its surface fibres drawn as the helices they are. The angle between a surface fibre and the yarn's axis is 22.8°, and it is the only quantity in this family: the yarn is 4.1% shorter than the fibre in it and carries 85% of the strength the same fibre would give lying straight.

Twist is one angle

Every model on this site treats a yarn as a cylinder with a diameter. It is a bundle of loose fibres, and what makes it behave like a cylinder is twist — which is a helix, so the whole subject is one angle, and the trade's twist factor turns out to be the only combination of count and turns that decides anything.

setting · Twist Every cloth at 150 grams. The counts and setts that all weigh 150 g/m² at a crimp of 7 per cent and a balance of 1. Hollow marks are past the jam — arithmetic rather than cloth. Among the 10 that can be woven the cover factor runs from 0.28 to 0.77, a factor of 2.77, and every one of them is the fabric the specification asked for.

What a fabric weighs

Every fabric is sold by its weight in grams per square metre, and the number is a sum of four products in which no term appears alone. One equation, four unknowns: a hundred and fifty grams describes an open coarse cloth and a close fine one, and the cover factors differ by a factor of nearly three.

setting · Weight

Named alongside it

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

Packing factorYarn countYarn diameterAreal densityCohesionCotton countCover factorCrimpFibre migrationFirmnessHelix angleJamming

All concepts