Narrow cloth or narrow-loom cloth is cloth of a comparatively narrow width.

Ergonomics Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Four primary goals of human factors learnin ...

historically limited the practical width that can be woven by a single weaver on a handloom; the weaver had to reach both edges of the cloth to throw the shuttle through the

shed A shed is typically a simple, single-story roofed structure that is used for hobbies, or as a workshop in a back garden or on an allotment. Sheds vary considerably in their size and complexity of construction, from simple open-sided ones de ...

. Wider widths had to be woven with a person on each side, throwing the shuttle back and forth between them, or, later, with a

flying shuttle The flying shuttle was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. It allowed a single weaver to weave much wider fabrics, and it could be mechanized, allowing for automatic machine l ...

. Narrow cloth was also a trading term for woolen cloths. Narrow cloths were distinguished in width from

broadcloth Broadcloth is a dense, plain woven cloth, historically made of wool. The defining characteristic of broadcloth is not its finished width but the fact that it was woven much wider (typically 50 to 75% wider than its finished width) and then hea ...

. The narrow cloths were different types of fabric woven over a relatively narrow loom and therefore had a narrower width. Different sources describe distinctive widths for narrow cloths as a rule width more than two yards was called broadcloth and less than one yard (36 inches), narrow cloth. Narrow cloth was also designated with width less than 29 inches. ''Narrow ware articles'' and ''Narrow ware woven'' were alternate terms of narrow fabrics.

Types

Geringsing Geringsing is a ''Tenun'' textile created by the double ikat method in the Bali Aga village of Tenganan Pegeringsingan in Bali. The demanding technique is only practiced in parts of India, Japan and Indonesia. In Indonesia it is confined to the ...

, a double ikat fabric of Bali, is a type of narrow cloth woven on back-strap looms. *

Tanmono A is a bolt of traditional Japanese narrow-loomed cloth. It is used to make traditional Japanese clothes, textile room dividers, sails, and other traditional cloth items. ( is a placeholder name) are woven in units of , a traditional unit ...

, a traditional narrow Japanese fabric bolt

Picture gallery

File:Geringsing_back-strap_loom.jpg, Preparing to weave geringseng on a back-strap loom File:Raphia weaver in Babouantou.jpg, A lone weaver without a

must be able to span the cloth with their arms

References

Woven fabrics {{textile-stub