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Interlace: A journal of mathematics and fiber arts (Interlace) is a peer-reviewed open-access electronic-only journal that publishes high-quality original work at the intersection of mathematics and fiber arts.

About Interlace:

The founding co-Editors-in-Chief (sarah-marie belcastro and Carolyn Yackel) have worked at the interface of mathematics and fiber arts at least since the 1990s when they attended mathematics graduate school at the University of Michigan. Their structuring of inquiry in this area can be traced through the introductory chapters of Making Mathematics with Needlework, Crafting by Concepts, Figuring Fibers, and the introduction to the 2023 Special Issue of Journal of Mathematics and the Arts. The seed for the impetus of founding Interlace came from the penultimate paragraph of Elizabeth Wilmer's review of Figuring Fibers in the AMS Notices.

The title Interlace was suggested by Carolyn Yackel. It is apt in many ways:

Definitionally, to interlace means to join together as with lacing, or to interweave, or to intertwine, or to "blend in an intricate way" (see thefreedictionary). Knitting, crochet, and weaving all use interlacing. The journal interlaces mathematics with fiber arts.
As a visual art term, interlace refers to a type of Mediaeval interlacing pattern that includes both Celtic knotwork and Islamic geometric arabesques. See the Wikipedia entry. These are all depictions of patterns that are also made with rope, yarn, or string.
In the yarn industry, there is a synthetic yarn manufacturing technique called air interlacing, in which parallel filaments are blasted with a perpendicular jet of air so that they adhere. See for example an explanation at PolySpinTex.
In discrete mathematics, the interlace polynomial is defined recursively on graphs using toggling of edges. It was introduced by Arratia, Bollobas, and Sorkin in 2002; a survey article was published by Ada Morse in 2016.
In combinatorics, families of interlacing polynomials are collections of real-rooted polynomials that have a certain relationship between the roots of the polynomials and the roots of their sum. See the paper in which they were introduced for the (very technical) definition. The method of interlacing polynomials was used by Marcus, Spielman, and Srivastava to create a probabilistic-method proof for minimum eigenvalues, and used instrumentally in their solution to the Kadison-Singer problem in functional analysis.

Interlace began publication in 2026 with intent to publish one volume/issue annually. It further interlaces practitioners into a larger community, provides a support structure for an academic community, provides a venue for publishing work that otherwise does not have an academic home, and disseminates this work to a broad audience.

The banner image is a detail of the lace ground from Delle Caustiche, a bobbin lace design by Dr. Veronika Irvine. See this website for more about Veronika and her work.

Editors-in-Chief:

Editorial Board:

About Interlace: