An 8 momme gauze given a water-repellent finish. A drop sits on the air trapped between the threads instead of spreading into them.
A repellent finish is not a film laid over the cloth. It coats each filament individually and leaves the spaces between the threads open, so the fabric still breathes and still handles like gauze. What holds the drop up is the air the threads trap underneath it, not a layer of plastic across the top.
We use a fluorine-free system. It rates 4 rather than the 5 a fluorinated finish would reach, but after twenty washes the difference has largely gone, and no PFAS are involved at any stage.
Repellent is not waterproof. Sustained rain, or any pressure, will still get through.
Gilt thread on an olive ground, drawn from a seventeenth-century fragment. A 48 cm repeat, and 2,400 cards to weave one of them.
Figure and ground are the same thread. The pattern exists only as a difference in how two structures reflect. Flat light hides it; raking light brings it up.
Bone figure on a grey-green ground. Thirty years on the same pattern, redrawn four times; the repeat has come in from 32 cm to 26.
Bring a swatch, a drawing, or just a sentence — "it should drape without going soft" is enough to start. We work backwards from yarn count. Minimum run 30 metres.