I'm looking at some online examples of jean cloth for uniforms.
It looks like cotton is the weft and wool the warp.
Not 100% sure though.
If that is the case, why would they not reverse that?
AFAIK cotton has a higher tensile strength and I am speculating it would have made the material stronger.
Any comments?
The mid-19th Century Jeans, etc., for clothing had a cotton warp, and a woolen weft, or "filling." This gave the woolen principally on the exterior. The jeans were employed as "cloth" for woolen garments.
An old timer notes the 1850s and 60s market from the turn of the century...
Satinets were woven so that the cotton warp was not visible on the right side of the finished garments... so they looked more like better quality stuff...
Besides reducing the quantity of wool yarns necessary for weaving yardage, the cotton warp goods had some slight advantage, in that there was less shrinkage in the length, versus the woolen filling, which would shrink and reduce the width of the goods in finishing...
A slight advantage in cutting clothing from such goods being, that cutting out lengths of garment required less allowance given for shrinkage.
As they were perhaps less liable to shrinkage...
All woolen cloth in the mid-19th Century was not intended to be washed. But Jeans were, since they were worn by laboring people...
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In the Southern United States, it was generally too hot for men to wear overalls over their clothing. So working men's clothing was made to "wear like iron" (and allowed for washing) by being made up with cotton warps, etc., which also reduced its price, given it was for clothing intended for wearing out...
Made of the jeans, of wool/cotton, or just cotton. Later in the 19th century and into the early 20th, Southern men frequently just wore daily the common cotton mail-order or store bought workman's "overalls" without trousers underneath...
Cotton warps were also used for cheap blanketing into the early 20th Century...
Cotton warp blankets were also considered "washable" but became less common into the 20th Century...
Cloth with a woolen warp, and cotton weft or filling, were not uncommon by the 1940s, as with woolen "elastique" or gabardines...
Bringing the