Every pattern has a paper trail.

Gingham, denim, paisley: every named cloth was first woven somewhere, named for something, and carried a route to reach us. Here is that record, with the geometry of each pattern rendered from its own specification, and a source under every claim.

Today’s specimen

Plate No. 139 · fabric

Linsey-Woolsey

Linsey-woolsey is a coarse, strong cloth woven with a linen or cotton warp and a wool weft, combining the strength of the bast fiber with the warmth of wool. Cheap and hard-wearing but rough to the skin, it was the everyday cloth of poor and working people for centuries, and in colonial and early America it was spun and woven at home into the standard winter clothing of farm families and the enslaved.

First documented Middle Ages · United Kingdom

Read the full entry →