Even-Weave Fabric

Clothing Industry

The Grid Under the Picture

Even-weave is best understood as graph paper made of thread. Every counted technique in embroidery — cross-stitch laying its X over a set square, blackwork building symmetrical filling patterns, Hardanger cutting and weaving counted blocks, Assisi work reserving a counted silhouette — assumes that the fabric's grid is regular enough to serve as the design's coordinate system. The photograph that accompanies this definition, a close-up of cross-stitch on even-weave, shows the system working: black and red cotton floss in folk patterns characteristic of the embroidery of eastern and central Europe sit stitch by stitch on a ground whose threads can be counted at a glance. Remove the regularity and the same chart produces a distorted picture; the fabric, not the chart, is where proportion lives.

Choosing Among Even-Weaves

The even-weave shelf is a graded set of compromises between ease and refinement. Aida cloth groups its threads into obvious blocks and is the most forgiving to count. Woven even-weaves such as jobelan present single threads in a smooth, regular grid at counts from the low 20s to the 30s. Linen even-weave offers the finest counts, the best drape and the most traditional surface, at the price of occasional slubs and slightly irregular threads that experienced stitchers read as character and beginners read as errors. Needlepoint canvas is the stiff, open member of the family, its mesh sized for wool and tent stitch rather than floss. All satisfy the same definition — warp and weft of the same size — and the choice among them is about how visible the grid should be while the work is in progress, and how invisible it should be when the work is done.