Warp and weft

Key facts and history

The warp is the set of yarns stretched on a loom before the weft is introduced during weaving.^[2] In the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution industrialized textile production with the picking stick and the flying shuttle, invented by John Kay in 1733.^[3] In 1785, Edmund Cartwright received a patent for the mechanized power loom, which achieved a rate of sixty picks per minute.^[3] Fabrics that are warp-faced have warp threads arranged densely, and because the design appears in the warp, all colors must be chosen and set during the initial weaving stage.^[4]

Backstrap weaving, which relies on the weaver's own body weight to regulate loom tension, was practiced by many South American cultures, such as the ancient Incas and Aymaras.^[4]

What the cited sources add

The Dictionary.com entry states that "warp and woof" has been used figuratively since the second half of the 1500s to mean the underlying structure or foundation of something.^[5] The phrase appears in modern usage such as "the warp and woof of British foreign policy" and "the warp and woof of the community fabric".^[5] A 2018 Los Angeles Times article used the phrase "narrative warp and woof" in discussing women's absence as storytellers in movies.^[5]