The first article in a series by Ralph Griswold on mathematical operations applied to drawdown patterns, defined as idealized interlacement grids of black and white cells. It sets out the basic terminology (rows, columns, lines) and notation (uppercase letters for patterns, lowercase for integers). It defines pattern properties: width, height, number of cells and number of colors. It previews later topics such as rotation, concatenation, replacement, rearranging rows and columns, and showing the back of a fabric, with color drawdowns discussed in the final article.