Glossaries

Ground usually refers to the cloth structure on which a pattern warp or pattern weft floats. If the (supplementary) pattern warp or weft is cut away from the cloth, the ground structure remains intact. Such grounds are found in overshot, crackle, summer and winter, and other tied unit weaves, but not in M's and O's, lace weaves, double weave, or damask, though these can also be block weaves or unit weaves or both. Pattern, an even more general term, refers to the area of cloth where the pattern warp or weft appears on the surface, but it can also mean any part of the design that the weaver designates as pattern on what is also an arbitrary designation of background. In beiderwand, for example, the 'pattern' weft usually forms the background.

Pattern warp most often refers to a supplementary warp that floats on a ground cloth to produce pattern. In tied unit weaves, the warp ends which determine pattern by remaining above or below a supplementary pattern-weft pick are often called pattern ends. In summer and winter, therefore, the ends in each unit that are not threaded on shafts 1 and 2 (which carry the the tie-down ends) are the pattern ends, and the shafts on which they are threaded the pattern shafts. Ground warp is used to distinguish the warp that weaves the ground cloth from a supplementary pattern warp. It also is sometimes used for the main warp of a lampas structure. It is not usually used to refer to the warp in supplementary weft structures.

The ground weft weaves with all of the warp ends to form the ground cloth. In tied unit weaves, the ground weft weaves plain weave (the ground cloth can aso be twill or satin) with all of the warp ends. The pattern weft creates pattern by floating above groups of warp ends (or beneath them) interweaving with only the tie-down ends. (The main weft in lampas is sometimes called the ground weft and the main structure the ground structure. The secondary weft in lampas is sometimes called the pattern weft.)