Obtained from The Worshipful Company of Weavers
| Term | Main definition |
|---|---|
| lamba | A 7 foot long fringed, brightly coloured shawl, hand woven in Madagascar. Worn as a ceremonial robe by men and women. Often used as a burial shroud. |
| lappet weaving | A method of weaving, on a special loom, small designs or spot effects on the surface of a fabrics. Unlike swivel weaving, the design is stitched into the fabric by needles and has the effect of embroidery. The lappet design is made with one continuous additional weft yarn being carried on the back of the fabric as it is being woven. The floating yarn is cut away later. see swivel weaving. |
| lawn | A fine linen cloth used for clerical garments woven in Laon, northern France. This fine sheer cloth is now woven in cotton and although crisper than voile is not as crisp as organdie. There are many types of lawn including Indian lawn, Victoria lawn, Persian lawn, Egyptian lawn and bishop\'s lawn. Liberty of London made famous their Tana lawn which began manufacture in the 1920s. Tana lawn is named after Lake Tana in Sudan where the raw cotton was grown. |
| leno | Sometimes referred to as gauze weave. A weaving technology, requiring special heddles or healds and shafts, which allows one warp end to be crossed with its neighbour and securely holding the weft in place. This construction can be used for light, open fabrics and to secure the edges of cut pieces of cloth like scarves. |
| linen | Linen is the fibre obtained from the flax stalk. Traditionally linen is obtained from pulled flax, to preserve the fibre length, and is then retted or rotted in water to seperate the linen fibre from the surrounding soft material. It is considered to be the strongest natural fibre. Evidence shows that linen could be the oldest textile in the world. Can be used in the production of clothing and household fabrics. See flax. |
| linsey-woolsey | |
| llama | Cloth made from llama\'s hair. The hair of the llama is coarser than that of the alpaca and is rarely used in the manufacture of clothing but often in making mats and bags. It\'s colour varies from black, brown to white. The llama, a pack animal no more than six feet high, and its close relation the alpaca are both derived from the much larger guanaco. All three are cameloids, but without humps, and together with the vicuna are found in South America. lama guaicoe. See alpaca and vicuna. |
| loom | A mechanism on which to weave cloth. The simplest loom is a wooden frame onto which warp yarns are stretched and fixed to two opposite sides. The weft is then passed up and over the warp threads to make a fabric. There are many types of loom: upright looms, backstrap looms, table looms, pit looms, horizontal looms, counterbalance looms, countermarch looms, inkle looms, tapestry looms, handlooms, treadle looms and power looms. The powerloom was invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1790. Handlooms prevail in India and in many developing countries where the local economy depends on handcraft. |
| macintosh | |
| macramé | Macramé is a hand knotting technique which is similar to tatting and net-making. |
| madder | |
| madras | The term madras has become synonymous with bold, colourful striped and checked handwoven cotton cloth from India. It gets its name from Madras, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, south east India. Many types of madras cottons are produced in Tamil Nadu: madras shirting, madras gauze, madras muslin, madras gingham and madras handkerchiefs, which in the early 19th century were woven with a silk warp and cotton weft. Sometimes the methods used in dyeing the cotton yarn, before weaving, are very haphazard. The dyestuff used are not always tested for light or wash fastness and quite often the dyed yarn is never given a very rigorous final wash so that surplus dye is still on the surface of the yarn. Many types of garments made from madras cotton were exported to the United States of America in the 1950s and 1960s. The impermanence of the colour was marketed a positive feature and became to known as bleeding madras. |
| manila hemp | Another name for abaca. See abaca. |
| matmi | |
| mercerize | A process which produces a smooth lustrous finish to cotton, or other cellulosic fibre, yarn and fabric. Mercerizing causes the cotton fibres to swell giving it greater dye affinity and also making the fibre stronger. The yarn or fabric is usually singed before mercerizing, but can precede or follow bleaching. The yarn or fabric is then passed through a solution of caustic alkali (caustic soda), then washed off. There are two types of mercerizing: hot mercerization, for uniform penetration into the fabric, and slack mercerization in the absence of tension. Discovered by John Mercer in 1844, the process was enhanced, to increase the lustre, by Horace Low in 1889. |