In such weaving of patterns it is here as sumed that the threads are dyed before the weaving is begun. The matter of printing colors upon calico, thin silk or the like is en tirely apart from the consideration of textile fabrics. Printing is done from blocks with color, almost exactly as if the material receiving the_pattern were paper instead of a woven stuff.
The simplest weave made in this way with colored threads is gingham, the name of which comes from the East, probably from India, with the invention of the weave itself. Checks, plaids and stripes are the natural patterns of gingham, but it is also practicable to produce various zig-zag and frets, and the stripes them selves may be variegated by patterns on their surface. Weaves of Persian and Chinese origin Nyith threads and softer and more woolly than European twisted cotton threads are sometimes very. attractive in color effect, woven exactly as gingham is woven.
Damask linen, such as is used for table cloths and napldns, is peculiar in that the pat tern is an elaborate twilled fabric in which the twill is arranged to make a pattern—often even of flowers and leaves. These patterns are seen merely by the difference of reflection of light upon the threads of the linen; for those threads Nahich lie parallel in one direction seem bril liant from a given point of view, while those lying in the other direction look dusky. A change of the position of the beholder reverses this effect of light and dark. Moreover it is common that the same pattern is seen in re verse on the other side of the fabric. There is nothing to prevent damask linen being woven with dyed threads in parts of the composition, and occasionally tablecloths of such material come into fashion.
Brocade, a term generally used for very splendid material, means primarily a stuff — composed in part of threads which lie on the surface of the finished stuff (French broches), appearing where the particular color is needed and disappearing again, as explained in the paragraph above. A brocade may be composed of threads all of one color. Thus the silks called dastsassi (French Damassis, or Dolmas sies) have perhaps a pattern of dark green leaves relieved in shining threads upon a back ground of exactly the same dye, but looking different because of the different and less glis tening character of the threads; this being caused not by the silk being differently spun, but because of the different treatment of the thread in the loom, the long loops lying flat and loosely, and reflecting the light in a differ ent way from the hard pulled threads of the background.
Satin is a material with a silken surface of unusual and uniform glossiness, which is pro duced by alternately (raising and depressing four yarns of the warp across the whole of which the weft is thrown by the shuttle.° It will be noted that this is a modification of twill ing, and the threads of satin are seen to lie in the same way as those of a twilled cotton. It is evident that such a surface is capable of many modifications. Thus there are some fab rics of silk and wool, or silk and cotton, in which the silk threads are thrown to the sur face, lying in very narrow stripes or bands, which show glossy on the background, which also show only in very narrow stripes between the others. These fabrics talce different names from year to year.
Again, there are Eastern brocades in which the bacicground is composed entirely of the warp threads in a satin weave of one color; while the flowers of the pattern are made up entirely of the woof threads and these in many colors with gold.
There remains to be mentioned those weaves in which the warp threads only are seen in the finished stuff. The most common form of this is ordinary ribbed silk, in which the warp threads form loops (silks called gros-grain and by other special names), giving a rib running across the stuff. 'thus a silk in longitudinal stripes of darker and lighter green, buff and brown, has all its woof threads of a dull brown; while the warp threads of the four colors named form visible ribs in which the colors are alternated in a very elaborate fash ion, so that one stripe is made up of a small check in two colors, another is plain and solid, of one color; and in all this the only effect of the dark woof is to modify slightly the hues of the stripes by showing between the warp threads.