Glossary
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W
Wadded Cloth: Fabric made with heavy extra warp or weft yarns, arranged to lie between the face and back of the cloth to add weight and bulk or pad the fabric.
Waffle Cloth: Square or oblong-shaped box formations appear on both the face and back of the fabric, by allowing both warp and weft yarns to float at fixed intervals.
Wale: In knitted fabrics, an intermeshed row of loops along the length of a weft knitted fabric. A column of loops in successive courses that is parallel with the loop axes. In machine knitting it is the product of one needle.
Warp: The longitudinal yarns in a woven fabric. Yarn intended for use or used in the warp of a woven fabric.
Warp Knitting: A number of threads arranged in longitudinal and horizontal direction are bound together by formation of stitches. Making fabric by a method in which the loops made from each warp thread are formed mainly along the length of the fabric. Manufactured on Tricot and Raschel knitting machines.
Warp Print: Warp yarns are printed with the design before weaving. Weft yarns are either white or neutral colour, so that a greyed effect is produced.
Washable: Fabrics or garments which may be washed without damage to color or shrinkage. Generally need qualification on the basis of laboratory tests as to the type of washing the material will withstand: hand, home machine, laundering, as well as temperature.
Weave: The process of forming a fabric on a loom by interlacing the warp and weft threads with each other. The weaves vary, depending on the interlacing pattern, used in a woven fabric. The fundamental weaves are Plain weave, Twill weave, and Satin weave. All other weaves, no matter how intricate, use one of these basic weaves in their composition. There are many variations on the basic principle, which make possible many different types of fabric surfaces and fabric strengths. See also Design.
Weft: Another name for Filling. A yarn intended for use in the filling of a woven fabric. A yarn which is interlaced with warp threads to make a fabric. Yarn running from selvedge to selvedge at right angles to the warp in a woven fabric. The widthways threads in a woven fabric.
Weft-Faced Twill: A weave characterised by diagonal lines produced by a series of floats staggered in the warp direction. Floats are normally formed by the wefts.
Wet Twisting: This is contrasted with the standard ‘dry twisting’, cotton yarns are passed beneath a roller submerged in a water trough before actually being twisted together. The protruding fibres are laid down by the water, thus producing smoother yarn.
Whipcord: Also called Artillery twill. A firm, compact, twill weave fabric using bulky yarns to give a raised look to the twill ribs. The prominent, indented, steep twill is produced by having the warp closely set and the weft more open, and a special weave in which the twill interlacings are ‘stepped-up’ two weft yarns to give a steeper twill line. See diagram for effect produced.
Wool: The fibrous covering of the sheep. Wool is the second mostly used natural clothing fibre. The fibre is from the fleece of the sheep or lamb, or hair from the Angora goat or Cashmere goat, (and may include the so-called speciality fibres from the hair of the camel, alpaca, llama, and vicuna), which has never been reclaimed from any woven or felted wool product. The yarn is spun from fibres, which are variable in length and randomly oriented to one another. They are intermingled and produce a bulky yarn with a fuzzy surface. Fabrics made from wool are warm and easy to manipulate, but good pressing is essential. Wool is popular not only for its quality of warmth. Because of its breathing properties, wool allows perspiration to dry on the skin, which, in turn, triggers the body’s cooling effect. This also prevents perspiration from being absorbed into the fabric as happens with other fibres that have a rapid absorption rate. Very fine wool fibres weighing only 120-300 grams per metre are now used for poplin, gabardine and panama.
Woollen: Description of yarns, fabrics or garments made of yarns of carded wool, more loosely twisted than ‘worsted’ yarns. Woollens, usually have a fuzzy surface as contrasted with a smooth surface of most worsteds.
Worsted: 1. Yarn. Worsted yarn is spun from long staple, wool fibres, which have been carded, and either gilled or combed, or both. Worsted yarn is smooth surfaced and blends very well with other fibres. 2. Fabric. Worsted fabric is manufactured wholly from worsted yarns, except that decoration threads of other fibres may be present. Worsted clothes are usually very closely woven, smooth to touch, light, springy, durable. It holds creases well and do not stain easily.
Woven: Double thread system, lengthwise (warp) and crosswise (weft), the two crossing one another at right angles, and kept together by means of interlacing (binding). Manufactured on conventional automatic looms, projectile looms, gripper looms and jet looms.
Wrinkle Resistance: That property and capacity of a textile material, which enables it to resist the formation of wrinkles when subjected to a folding deformation and/or recover from creasing. Molecular cross-linking is one of the processes employed to improve crease resistance. Crease resistance is a term commonly used in place of the preferred term ‘wrinkle resistance’.
