Handloom Weaving Lab: Warp, Weft, Shed and Fabric Strength Blender 5.2

A wooden floor loom lifts some warp threads and not others (the shed), a shuttle carries the weft through, and the reed beats it into cloth. Pick a weave, a yarn and a thread count, then test how strong the cloth is. Drag to look around; the buttons under the picture jump to the shed, the strength tester, the spinning corner and the finished rushnyk.

Presets

Weave pattern (draw your own)

Weave Width Height

Click the big grid: a filled square means the warp thread is lifted OVER that weft pick. Threading (top), tie-up (top right) and treadling (right) follow from your drawing, exactly as a weaver reads a draft.

How the cloth looks from the front (warp colour and weft colour, 2 x 2 repeats)

Warp colour

Weft colour

Yarn: fibre, thickness and twist

Warp fibre Weft fibre

Warp yarn thickness

Weft yarn thickness

Warp twist

Weft twist

Thickness is the yarn linear density in tex (grams per kilometre). Twist is in turns per metre.

Cloth on the loom

Warp ends per cm

Weft picks per cm

Cloth width

Warp tension / weft tensionTight warp keeps the warp straighter and pushes the crimp into the weft.

Speed

Live readouts

Graphs

Yarn strength against twist (marker: this yarn; dashed: best twist)

Crimp against warp tension ratio (Peirce geometry; marker: now)

Strip test: load against stretch of the strip (live while testing)

Experiment: how does breaking load grow with thread count?

A strip of cloth is clamped in the tester and pulled along the warp until every thread has snapped. The 3D tester shows a magnified strip; the numbers are for the real fabric. Each thread has its own random strength, so the strip is weaker than threads x average strength.

Strip width

Breaking load of a 5 cm strip against warp ends per cm: simulated mean and spread (dots), analytic bundle strength (line), and the naive sum of thread strengths (dashed).

Independent numerical checks

Rushnyk: draw a cross-stitch border

A rushnyk is an embroidered ritual towel. Draw one motif; it repeats across the width at both ends of the towel in 3D.

Motif Mirror left-right

Cloth threads per stitch

Towel length

Motif rows per end

From flax field to finished cloth

Weaver speed

Working hours per day

Spinning speed (yarn drawn out)Drop spindle about 2 m/min, spinning wheel about 6 m/min.

View and quality

Labels Tie-up cords

Quality

High is the default on every device. Low lowers resolution and shadow detail (also ?q=low).

The science