Textile pattern glossary

Woven cloth

Sett

The repeating sequence of coloured stripes a check is built from, written in threads. In Scottish weaving the word names the pattern itself — a clan's sett is its particular run of colours and counts.

Here: Written as a thread count and mirrored or repeated. How to read one.

Thread count

A sett written down: a colour letter and a number of threads, over and over. K4 B24 K2 W6 is four black, twenty-four blue, two black, six white.

Here: Typed straight in, described in words, or read off a photograph of real cloth. An unrecognised colour letter is kept and handed to you to map, not refused.

Reflective sett

A sett that runs to a pivot and comes back, so it is written once and read both ways. Most clan tartans are reflective.

Here: There is no pivot character: the first and last stripe are the mirror axes, counted once while everything between them appears twice. An odd pivot count puts the axis mid-thread and is flagged.

Repeating sett

A sett that runs straight round with no reflection — the usual case for gingham, buffalo check and madras.

Here: Any of ..., | or (rep) in the notation switches a sett from mirrored to repeating.

Warp

The threads held under tension lengthwise on the loom before weaving starts.

Here: Carried as its own colour sequence, separately from the weft. Warp and weft.

Weft

The thread that runs crosswise, woven over and under the warp, building the cloth row by row. One crossing of it is a pick.

Here: Can mirror the warp (a check), be a single colour (a stripe), or carry a sequence of its own.

Yarn and density

Ends per inch (EPI)

How many warp threads are set in an inch of cloth. With picks per inch it is what makes a thread count into a physical size.

Here: Follows the yarn rather than being typed in: about 14 times the square root of the count, times how openly the cloth is set. The calculator.

Picks per inch (PPI)

The weft equivalent of ends per inch: how many crossings there are in an inch down the cloth.

Here: Held alongside epi, so a cloth can be set more openly in one direction than the other.

Yarn count

How fine a yarn is. English cotton count (Ne) says how many 840-yard hanks weigh a pound, so higher is finer; tex is grams per 1000 metres, so higher is coarser.

Here: Set in Ne, with each fibre held to counts it can really be spun to. Ne, tex, diameter and wraps per inch.

Wraps per inch (WPI)

How many turns of a yarn fill an inch of a ruler — the measurement a hand weaver can take without any arithmetic. Half of it is roughly the sett that closes the cloth.

Here: Shown for the chosen count, and the closed sett is derived from it.

Cover

How much of the sett the yarn actually fills. Below full cover the cloth is open and the ground shows through between the threads.

Here: Computed from the count and the sett, so a 26-epi worsted and a 60-epi poplin can both read as closed.

Drafts and looms

Draft

The instructions for weaving a structure: the threading, the tie-up and the treadling together. It is what a weaver needs, as distinct from a picture of the cloth.

Here: Derived from the cloth itself rather than from the weave's name, so a custom draft or a different structure per stripe comes out right.

Drawdown

The picture of the woven cloth worked out from a draft — which thread is on top at every crossing. A draft describes; a drawdown shows.

Here: The renderer and the WIF writer read the same crossings, so the file and the picture cannot disagree.

Threading

Which shaft each warp end is drawn through, end by end.

Here: Worked out by grouping ends whose lifts are identical over the repeat — so shafts are discovered from the cloth, not assumed.

Tie-up

Which shafts each treadle lifts.

Here: A treadle lifts whatever shafts are up on its pick.

Treadling

The order the treadles are pressed in, pick by pick.

Here: Picks whose lifts match share a treadle, which keeps the draft as short as the cloth allows.

Shaft

A frame on the loom that lifts a set of warp ends. How many a loom has sets a limit on the structures it can weave.

Here: Counted for you, with a warning when a draft asks for more than a twenty-four-shaft loom and a suggestion to simplify the stripes.

Dobby

A loom mechanism that selects the shafts for each pick, so the treadling can be long and irregular without a treadle per combination. A computer-assisted dobby reads the draft from a file.

Here: Exported as WIF, which is the format those looms read. There is also a dobby cloth mode, where each stripe carries its own weave.

WIF

Weaving Information File: the plain-text format weaving programs and looms exchange drafts in. It holds the threading, tie-up, treadling and thread colours — and no picture.

Here: Written as WIF 1.1 for one full seamless repeat. What is in one.

Structures

Plain weave

Over one, under one. Every crossing blends evenly, which gives a flat surface — the structure of gingham and most everyday checks.

Here: One of the shipped structures.

Twill

Over one, under two or more, offset by a thread each row, which makes the diagonal line seen in flannel and traditional tartan.

Here: 2/2, 3/1 and 2/1, in an S or Z direction.

Basket weave

A plain weave with threads doubled up, so it reads as small squares rather than a fine grid.

Here: Shipped as 2/2 basket.

Herringbone

A twill whose direction reverses at intervals, so the diagonal zigzags instead of running one way.

Here: A structure in its own right, not a filter over a twill.

Selvedge

The finished edge along each side of woven cloth, where the weft turns back rather than being cut. It stops the cloth fraying and is often woven a little differently from the body.

Here: not something the studio makes — the word is in this list because it comes up, not because it is a feature.

Printed pattern

Repeat

One tile of a pattern, and the distance before it comes round again. Usually quoted as a physical size: a 20 cm repeat.

Here: Set in centimetres, and the exports carry that size rather than a bare pixel count.

Seamless tile

A tile whose edges match its opposite edges, so it can be laid next to itself endlessly with no visible join.

Here: Built by construction rather than patched afterwards. What makes one seamless.

Half-drop

A layout in which every other column of tiles is dropped by half a tile, so the rows no longer line up and the repeat is harder to see.

Here: The drop is part of the wrapping, not applied to a finished tile. Straight, half-drop and brick.

Brick

A half-drop turned ninety degrees: every other row shifts sideways by half a tile, like courses of brickwork.

Here: Chosen by which way the motif runs; for a chevron or a braid it is the only offset that helps.

Ditsy

A small-scale, densely scattered floral — flowers about a centimetre across, close together, with no obvious grid. The layout that hides its own repeat best.

Here: A scale in the floral engine, which sets the size and the number of motifs together.

Tossed

Motifs scattered at varying angles rather than placed on a grid, so the pattern reads as informal.

Here: A distribution in the floral engine. Because a toss has no rows, a half-drop does nothing to it — the repeat length is what hides it.

Colourway

The same design in a different palette. Commercial collections are usually one design in five to eight colourways rather than eight designs.

Here: Kept separately from the layout, so recolouring does not disturb the drawing. Building a range.

Ground

The colour that covers the most area, the one the rest of the pattern sits on. Not necessarily the background in a drawing sense — in a check it is the widest band.

Here: A role, alongside body and accent, so a palette can be applied to any design by what each colour does rather than by position.

Ikat

A resist-dyeing technique in which the yarn is bound and dyed before weaving, which leaves the characteristic feathered, slightly blurred edge where colours meet.

Here: Available as a geometric motif — the look of ikat, drawn; the studio does not simulate the dyeing.

Damask

Figured cloth whose pattern is made by the weave structure itself, traditionally with a satin figure on a matt ground, so the design shows as a difference in sheen rather than in colour.

Here: Available as a geometric motif in the print engine. The woven engine does not weave a figured damask.

Files

DPI

Dots per inch: how many pixels there are for every inch of the finished print. Pixels are inches times dpi, so the same file is a different physical size at a different dpi.

Here: Chosen at export, and written into the PNG so it opens at its real size. The DPI guide.

Bleed

Extra artwork beyond the trim line, so that a small error in cutting does not leave a white edge. Usually 3 mm.

Here: Not a setting: a seamless repeat can simply be exported larger than the trim size. Sizes per surface.

Vector

Artwork stored as shapes with coordinates rather than as a grid of pixels, so it can be drawn at any size and recoloured by changing a fill.

Here: Exported as a real vector repeat — flat, unshaded colour, since texture and effects are rendering rather than geometry. SVG or PNG.

Questions

Where to go next

• How to read a tartan thread count
• The weaving side: drafts, yarn and WIF
• The yarn count calculator
• All the guides