Cotton Weaving and Designing / 6th Edition

by John T. Taylor

[Fig. 401] is a design for this fabric, showing a small portion of both ground and figure. The cloths are bound together once in every eight threads.

FIG. 401.

Figured Weft Pile Velvets.—When figuring with weft and pile, the chief difficulty is the cutting of the fabric after weaving, owing to the difficulty of keeping the knife-guide in the race when passing from one portion of the figure to another across the ground.

A considerable quantity of fabrics had been made with velvet cord figures—which are easy enough to cut—before it was found possible to cut the real velvet figure. This was rendered possible by throwing the short floats of pile weft to the back of the cloth at the edges of the figure, and always moving in steps or races at the edges of the figure, and in addition to this always keeping the end upon which the knife runs, to the inside of each step. By throwing out the short floats the chief difficulty was overcome, as the obstruction caused by these was the chief cause of the knife and guide being thrown out when cutting. These improvements were simultaneously devised by the writer and Mr. T. Anderson, of Wyke, and a large quantity of cloth was turned out a few years ago, but owing to the cottony appearance of the ground the demand quickly fell away.

FIG. 402.

Two large manufacturers took out a patent to include all figured weft pile fabrics, but a thorough search could not have been made, as the writer recently came across a heap of patterns woven on the same principle, including the stepping in races, and also with a coloured extra warp ground, which had been made at least before the year 1870.

The method of putting the designs on point paper is shown at [Fig. 402]. The weave generally used is an ordinary E1 velvet with about 400 picks per inch, woven in an 80 reed 2-60’s twist, 70’s weft. It will be seen that the figure steps in twos at the edges, and that all floats less than five are thrown to the back of the cloth by the small dots in the design. The blanks represent the weft on the face, and the inside of the step or race is arranged to come on the third, fifth, seventh ends, and so on, these being the ends along which the knife runs. Where a turn is made in the figure it must be on an odd number of ends in order to keep the race in this position.

Other systems of making figured weft pile fabrics have been tried. One of these was to use an extra warp at the back for binding the pile picks where the ground is required, and binding the picks where the figure is required, to the ordinary warp. When the pile is cut the extra warp is torn away, pulling the pile with it where the ground of the pattern occurs.