Marcy Petrini 

November, 2025 

In the October blog, I described my confusion about pebble weave and pebble twill. They are both twills by Emery classification: a progressive successions of floats in diagonal alignments. The pebble twill has a unique threading with a straight draw treadling. The pebble weave uses a straight twill threading with unique treadling steps.

Thus, we can think of the pebble weave as a treadling method for a straight twill threading. Treadling methods are treadling sequences applied to one or more threadings, often twills. This is in contrast to a “twill” which has a threading and its own treadling, the “tromp as writ” treadling.

I also mentioned that it is possible to weave the pebble weave with a treadling that is similar to that of the crepe weave.

That got me thinking: here is another confusing pair, the crepe weave and the crepe twill. While the crepe twill is indeed a twill, the crepe weave doesn’t have the progressive succession of floats that we need for a twill.

The drawdown of the crepe weave below shows the “on opposite”: treadling: 1 & 2 is followed by its opposite 3 & 4; 2 & 4 is followed by its opposite 1 & 3. Thus, this is also a treadling method applied to a straight draw.

The fabric is textured, as seen below. The name comes from fabric made with crepe yarns which the crepe weave tries to imitate.

Crepe yarns are highly twisted and when used in a plain weave warp with alternating S and Z twist yarns, they produce a textured fabric, according to spinning guru Mable Ross.

In contrast, the crepe twill has an interesting threading with 16-thread repeats. In the drawdown below the first repeat is shown in a lighter color to clarify it.

The threading is reminiscent of a tied-unit weave; the first eight threads are the same as the threading of the first two blocks of summer and winter. In the second set of eight threads, the “tie” on shaft 1 pairs with each “pattern shaft”, 3 and 4, followed by the ”tie” on shaft 2 again followed by the “pattern shafts”. The treadling is a straight draw.

This, too, forms a textured fabric, shown below. The first part of the cloth has a different color warp in parallel to the drawdown.

Weaving has been evolving for hundreds of years, in different parts of the world with sparse communication in the past. It’s not surprising that similar names have been applied to different weaving structures.

Happy weaving!

Marcy