Jacquard Weaving and Designing

by T. F. Bell

CHAPTER VIII
DOUBLE CLOTH

DOUBLE CLOTH AND QUILTING HARNESSES

A very great variety of cloths come under the heading of double cloth; in fact, almost every description of coloured cloth figured in the loom, excepting coloured damasks and the commoner descriptions of dress goods, as well as many uncoloured fabrics, are generally woven more or less on this principle. Quiltings are mostly made on the double-cloth principle, and have nothing to specially distinguish them, except that some makes of cloth appear to be more suitable for goods of this description, though frequently other fabrics of a much more costly nature are woven in the same way; as, for instance, matelasses may be made in the richest silk and worsted for jackets, as well as in coarse cotton for quilts. One of the largest sections of double cloth is carpetings, but these will be described in a separate section.

For figuring double cloths the same principles of the structure of the cloth, &c., hold good as when weaving them plain, or in fancy texture. Any suitable pattern can be put upon any description of double cloth with a full harness mounting mounted in the ordinary manner; but the pattern must be spread over the design paper to suit the description of cloth to be made, which often necessitates its being in a very distorted form, unless it can be arranged in different colours so that the card-cutter can cut several cards from each line of the design paper. For instance, if three colours are required to form one complete weft line, then three lines of the design paper would be taken up with these, unless the colours could be arranged that the three cards could be cut from the one line, as frequently can be done; and the same for the warp when there is a face and back warp, or several colours to be brought up for one warp line. When there are two warp threads, one for the face and one for the back, two hooks of the jacquard are required to weave them, and two lines on the design paper are also required, unless two colours are painted on one line to guide the card-cutter in cutting the cards.

It is a great saving of work to the designer when the pattern has not to be spread over the paper so as to give each line separately, as doing so generally puts the pattern so much out of shape that it requires first to be designed square, or of the proper dimensions, on suitable design paper, and afterwards transferred to the working design for the card-cutter. When goods are being largely made this can often be avoided by special mechanism or mounting, to act instead of the cards, it being then worth the trouble of having a specially prepared mounting, and it is in these cases where double-cloth mountings are used. Perhaps the simplest class of the double-cloth range, though not really a double cloth, is figuring with extra weft. The figuring weft may be thrown in as a spotting intermittently, or may be every alternate shot, a ground shot following each figure shot.

Suppose the cloth to be a plain ground and a twill figure, and that 500 cards would be required to weave the figure if it were plain damask; it is then evident that 1,000 cards would be required if every alternate shot is ground, and the others for figure, and that the 500 plain cards for the ground would be two cards repeated 250 times. Now, instead of this, if we use a double-cylinder jacquard, and put the figuring cards on one side and four plain cards on the other side, we can save 496 cards, as the four cards on the cylinder will work the plain at every alternate shot. Or suppose a single-cylinder machine to be used, then shafts might be put through loops in the harness; or the cumber board might be made in sections, with knots on the harness twines above it, so that in either case the harness could be raised in rows to form plain cloth.

The plain shed could be formed with a tappet and levers, as in journal weaving, and the griffe would only be raised for every figuring shot. Plain cloth might also be wrought with a twilling motion on the machine, such as is used on twilling jacquards. A pair of pressure heddles in front of the harness is a common method of accomplishing this in the hand loom. The harness is drawn for one shot, then let down, and one of the pressure heddles sunk and the other raised for the second shot. For the third shot the harness is again drawn, and for the fourth shot the plain shed is crossed with the heddles. A twill or any figure may be used, as well as a plain ground.

The next step in double cloth is perhaps double-weft-faced cloth—that is, when the surface of the cloth on both sides is formed by weft, the warp lying in the centre, and merely acting as binders to bind the two wefts together. The warp may occasionally be brought to the surface to give additional effect, or to add a third colour; or the body of the weft may be kept on one side, the warp forming the ground on the other side, with a weft figure on it, producing a one-sided cloth.

This class of work is best wrought in a pick-and-pick loom; but a check loom—that is, one with extra boxes at one side only—can frequently be used, and gives much less trouble. For a check loom two fine shots may be used as one, having each pair of cards alike, except at the selvage, and throwing two shots into each shed. Of course this takes twice the number of picks and cards (unless two picks be given to each card), but in some cases, as for borders, this may be an advantage in comparison with working pick-and-pick. Often two succeeding cards of the pattern for the same colour are made to follow each other, as may be found in tapestries, &c., and the weft knocks up into its place without showing any defect; but in a heavy cloth, with a thick or stiff warp, the weft could not be knocked close together on this principle. With a fine binding, warp of cotton and a thicker weft of woollen or worsted, there is no difficulty in this working.

For double-weft-faced patterns the simplest method of designing is to paint the pattern as if for plain damask, and then cut two cards for each line of the design paper, one card being cut exactly the reverse of the other; that is, the cutter cuts the painted squares for one card and the ground squares for the next card. In lacing these two cards are kept together, a ground and a flowering card coming alternately. There is, however, an objection to this method of binding the texture of the cloth, though in many cases it works very well. The objection is that the warp has to be brought from the face of one side through to the face of the other side for the succeeding shot to form the binding, instead of being brought from the centre only to the face as it should be.