Shape is one of the properties for conveying data values that is shared across textile crafts, along with many other artistic media.
Different textile crafts have their own traditions around the kinds of shapes the textile craft tends to use, and how it creates those shapes.
In most cases, you can use textile crafts to create shapes drawn from standard data visualization (e.g. bar graphs, pie charts), but this handbook of textile data visualization focuses on adapting the shapes and patterns that are part of each craft’s traditional repertoire.