About the Journal

The FLT online journal publishes peer-reviewed scholarly articles related to textile production and use in ethnographic and historical contexts. As our title suggests, our articles focus on material properties, aspects of textile making, as well as functions. The ranges of topics include loom-woven textiles, non-loom textiles and baskets, and non-woven materials such as bark-cloth and their associated material.

The intended readership consists of academics and lay-people with an interest in textiles. To keep costs low, we take a simple, no-frills approach to publishing. Articles are online-only and can be viewed online or downloaded in pdf format. They are published in the order they are received and edited.

This journal is published by the Tracing Patterns Foundation in Berkeley, California, with the support of an international editorial team. We provide Open Access to read, download, and submit articles through registration. If you would like to support this initiative, please contact us or make a donation to the Tracing Patterns Foundation.

We seek articles that contain original material and high-quality illustrations including photographs, tables, drawings. There is no length restriction. Short reports, such as brief field observations, are welcome, as are longer articles. We expect articles to be concisely written, with a minimum of jargon, particularly as our readership is an international one. Necessary technical terms related to weaving, scientific analysis, terms in local languages (in italics), etc. are acceptable.

We do not publish articles of the following types: very general topics (eg “The State of Handicrafts in XYZ”), contemporary studio weaving, travelogues, philosophical articles, articles that have been substantially published elsewhere in a slightly different form.

We accept copies of newly published books and may commission reviews if we feel they are relevant and useful for our readership. We do not accept unsolicited reviews of books.

We invite articles from scholars with English as a second language. We provide basic English correction, provided the meaning is clear and the workload for our editors is manageable. We are not able to accept articles where meaning is unclear or a complete re-write would be required.

All articles are blind peer-reviewed. We keep the reviewing process appropriate to each article. We want to ensure that factual reports of field observations can be published rapidly without getting bogged down in lengthy review processes, and some field reports may be published with editorial review only, if appropriate.