Double weave - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Double cloth or double weave (also doublecloth, double-cloth) is a kind of woven

Weaving

Weaving is a method of fabric production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. The other methods are knitting, lace making and felting. The longitudinal threads are called the warp and the lateral threads are the weft or filling...

textile

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

in which two or more sets of warp

Warp (weaving)

In weaving cloth, the warp is the set of lengthwise yarns that are held in tension on a frame or loom. The yarn that is inserted over-and-under the warp threads is called the weft, woof, or filler. Each individual warp thread in a fabric is called a warp end or end. Warp means "that which is thrown...

s and one or more sets of weft

Weft

In weaving, weft or woof is the yarn which is drawn through the warp yarns to create cloth. In North America, it is sometimes referred to as the "fill" or the "filling yarn"....

or filling yarn

Yarn

Yarn is a long continuous length of interlocked fibres, suitable for use in the production of textiles, sewing, crocheting, knitting, weaving, embroidery and ropemaking. Thread is a type of yarn intended for sewing by hand or machine. Modern manufactured sewing threads may be finished with wax or...

s are interconnected to form a two-layered cloth. The movement of threads between the layers allows complex patterns and surface textures to be created.

In contemporary textile manufacturing

Textile manufacturing

Textile manufacturing is a major industry. It is based in the conversion of three types of fibre into yarn, then fabric, then textiles. These are then fabricated into clothes or other artifacts. Cotton remains the most important natural fibre, so is treated in depth...

, the term "double cloth" or "true double cloth" is sometimes restricted to fabrics with two warps and three wefts, made up as two distinct fabrics lightly connected by the third or binding weft, but this distinction is not always made, and double-woven fabrics in which two warps and two wefts interlace to form geometric patterns are also called double cloths.

Double-faced fabrics are a form of double cloth made of one warp and two sets of wefts, or (less often) two warps and one weft. These fabrics have two right sides or faces and no wrong side, and include most blanket

Blanket

A blanket is a type of bedding, generally speaking, a large piece of cloth, intended to keep the user warm, especially while sleeping. Blankets are distinguished from sheets by their thickness and purpose; the thickest sheet is still thinner than the lightest blanket. Blankets are generally used...

s, satin

Satin weave

Satin weave is one of the three important textile weaves. The satin weave is distinguished by its lustrous, or 'silky', appearance...

ribbon

Ribbon

A ribbon or riband is a thin band of material, typically cloth but also plastic or sometimes metal, used primarily for binding and tying. Cloth ribbons, most commonly silk, are often used in connection with clothing, but are also applied for innumerable useful, ornamental and symbolic purposes...

s, and interlinings.

Double weaving is an ancient technique. Surviving examples from the Paracas culture

Paracas culture

The Paracas culture was an important Andean society between approximately 800 BCE and 100 BCE, with an extensive knowledge of irrigation and water management. It developed in the Paracas Peninsula, located in what today is the Paracas District of the Pisco Province in the Ica Region...

of Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

have been dated to before AD 700.

Modern applications of double cloth include haute couture

Haute couture

Haute couture refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is made to order for a specific customer, and it is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable seamstresses,...

coats

Coat (clothing)

A coat is a long garment worn by both men and women, for warmth or fashion. Coats typically have long sleeves and are open down the front, closing by means of buttons, zippers, hook-and-loop fasteners, toggles, a belt, or a combination of some of these...

, blanket

Blanket

s, furnishing fabrics, and some brocade

Brocade

Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and with or without gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli," comes from Italian broccato meaning "embossed cloth," originally past participle of the verb broccare...

Uses

Double cloth textiles are a characteristic artifact of Pre-Columbian

Pre-Columbian

The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...

Peru

, where they were woven of cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

and alpaca

Alpaca

An alpaca is a domesticated species of South American camelid. It resembles a small llama in appearance.Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of southern Peru, northern Bolivia, Ecuador, and northern Chile at an altitude of to above sea level, throughout the year...

yarns in various combinations

In Medieval England, double weaves called compound weft-faced twills featured weft or filling yarns in multiple colors, with the design completely covering the face warp yarns and the unused colors for any particular section woven into a binding warp on the reverse side.

In early 19th century America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, double cloth wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

and cotton

Cotton

woven coverlet

Woven coverlet

A woven coverlet or coverlid is a type of bed covering with a woven design in colored wool yarn on a background of natural linen or cotton. Coverlets were woven in almost every community in the United States from the colonial era until the late 19th century.-History:Coverlets of 18th century...

s were made by professional weavers from wool that was spun (and often dyed) at home and then delivered to a local weaver who made up the coverlet.

In the later 19th century, craftsman and designer William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

offered wool and silk

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...

double cloth fabrics for furnishing through his firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (later Morris & Co.)

Morris & Co.

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. and its successor Morris & Co. were furnishings and decorative arts manufacturers and retailers founded by the Pre-Raphaelite artist and designer William Morris...

. These double-woven fabrics had separate warps of wool and silk yarn and were woven by Alexander Morton & Co. of Darvel, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, who would later weave similar fabrics from designs by C. F. A. Voysey and others.

Contemporary couture designers use "true" double cloth to make self-lined or reversible coats and jackets by using hand-finishing techniques such as separating the two layers at the hem and turning the raw edges under. Double cloth garments may also be made reversible by binding or overcasting edges.

Uses

External links

Further reading