Counterpanes.
The jacquard is largely used in the counterpane and quilt industry, centred in Bolton. The Marseilles and toilet quilts, with which may be associated the well-known toilet cloths, are on the double-cloth principle—a good face of plain weave in fine yarns being embossed, as it were, by a thick soft weft being woven underneath and attached to the cloth by additional warp threads. This backing weft sometimes floats outside the cloth, sometimes is bound inside just below the plain face, and at other parts the whole of the yarn is firmly united. Where the backing is brought inside, the top cloth is raised up; whilst at those places where all the ends are woven together a depression is caused. Large embossed figures may thus be shown on the cloth, although it appears to have an unbroken surface. A coarser quality is made, where both face and back wefts are coarse and from the same cop.
Perched quiltings are in this style, but the figures are small, diamond-shaped, and regular.
The honeycomb quilt, as its name implies, is a cloth with the figures on its surface formed by raised ridges both warp and weft way. This is generally woven in bleached knitting cottons, two or three-fold; and as with this weave others may be combined, and stripes of coloured worsted inserted, great scope is given to the designer.
A Grecian quilt is woven in bleached knitting cottons, and yet the coarse threads give a smooth glossy surface in consequence of the weave being on the damask principle—i.e., the figure may be formed in a weft satin while the ground is a warp satin.
The Alhambra quilts are figured in various designs and woven with vari-coloured yarns.