Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Generator

What an interlacing costs

What an interlacing costs
What an interlacing costs. Each weave's interlacing count beside the closest it can be set in the same yarn. The two run opposite ways, because a thread that changes face often has to bend often and a bend takes room.

Each weave's interlacing count beside the closest it can be set in the same yarn. The two run opposite ways, because a thread that changes face often has to bend often and a bend takes room.

7 essays call interlacing. The drawing above is what it returns with no arguments at all; every call below passes it something, because a placement that passes nothing draws whichever member of the family the generator happens to default to rather than the weave its essay argues about.

Where it is called

Changing this generator changes every one of these figures.

The same thread count, twice. Two cloths with identical thread counts and different yarn. The count is the same number in both; the fraction of the surface the threads actually occupy is not, and that fraction is what thread count is usually taken to mean. Setting and geometry

Thread count is not quality

It counts threads. It says nothing about how much of the cloth they cover, it can be inflated by counting plies, and it ranks fabrics in nearly the wrong order. The quantity it is mistaken for is cover factor, and that one is computable.

 Colour and weave — 2/2 twill. One interlacement, threaded in two colour orders. What a reader sees is the colour of whichever thread is on the face, so the visible pattern can be something the draft gives no hint of. Pattern and colour

Colour and weave

Thread the same weave with a different order of coloured ends and a pattern appears that is nowhere in the draft. Houndstooth is an ordinary two-and-two twill, and nothing about its interlacement is unusual at all.

 What an interlacing costs. Each weave's interlacing count beside the closest it can be set in the same yarn. The two run opposite ways, because a thread that changes face often has to bend often and a bend takes room. Setting and geometry

How close can threads be set

There is a maximum. Push more threads into a cloth than the geometry allows and they simply will not go, and the limit depends on the weave as much as on the yarn.

 What an interlacing costs. Each weave's interlacing count beside the closest it can be set in the same yarn. The two run opposite ways, because a thread that changes face often has to bend often and a bend takes room. Weaves

Interlacings and firmness

Every time a thread changes face it has to bend, and a bend takes room. That one sentence decides how densely a cloth can be set, how firm it feels, and why the two run in opposite directions.

 What an interlacing costs. Each weave's interlacing count beside the closest it can be set in the same yarn. The two run opposite ways, because a thread that changes face often has to bend often and a bend takes room. Setting and geometry

The weave decides the sett, and two models disagree about it

Ashenhurst's rule and Peirce's geometry both answer how densely a cloth can be set, and for a plain weave they are fifteen per cent apart. Only one of them reaches the other weaves at all, and it is the cruder one.

 A spread shading on 8 ends. The 7 tone steps of a spread shading on an 8-end repeat, each built by adding one more coset of the 8-end satin with move 3. Every coset has exactly one mark in every end and every pick, so the fraction of warp on the face is k over 8 exactly at every step, with no averaging in it. The numbers beneath are the longest float, and they run 7, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3, 7 — so the lustre scale is not the tone scale. The midtone is a plain weave and the extremes are satins, which is why a spread shading is at its most matt exactly in the middle. What the drafts cannot show is the surface: a long float stands proud of a short one, so an evenly toned shading is not an even surface either. Pattern and colour

A shading changes two things at once

The tone steps of a shaded damask are exactly even — each adds one satin coset, so the fraction of warp on the face is k over n with no averaging in it. The lustre steps are not even at all: on eight ends the longest float runs 7, 3, 3, 1, 3, 3, 7, so a series that grades smoothly in tone is at its most matt exactly in the middle.

 Every thread's interlacings in an eight-end satin stripe on a plain ground. An eight-end satin stripe on a plain ground on point paper, with a bar under every end and beside every pick for the share of its crossings at which it changes face. The warp's fewest is 0.25 a crossing against an average of 0.88, and the weft's 0.83 against 0.86; the draft's single firmness number is 0.87. What the bars cannot show is the friction at each crossing, which turns a count into a grip. Weaves

A cloth slips at its least-interlaced thread

A weave's firmness is quoted as one number, the interlacings per crossing averaged over the whole repeat. A cloth does not fail on average. A thread pulled through a seam or out of a cut edge is held by its own crossings, the grip is exponential in them, and the thread with fewest goes first. In every four-by-four draft but plain weave some thread interlaces twice a repeat — the fewest possible — whatever the average says, and a satin stripe on a plain ground averages 0.87 while its satin ends grip at a seventh of the average thread.

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