Textile terms can be a bit confusing/misleading/uncomprehensible, trust me I know. My first year in the
College of Textiles at NCSU was basically spent learning all new terminology and changing the way I thought about fabrics of any sort (and who knew there was so much darn math and lab work? Seriously, who knew?). Well if you ever find yourself in the situation where you need to know the difference between a Dobby* and a Jacquard woven fabric or if something is railroaded or not or even if something is knit or woven then I'm going to give you a couple of resources that can help out.
First, let's go to the almighty Cotton Incorporated and their online
Fashion and Fabric Glossary. It's just a basic reference list, but a handy one to bookmark nonetheless. We had little printed versions of this when I was in school. (We all wanted jobs with Cotton Inc back in the day)
Another online glossary (that's a bit more technical and in depth than Cotton Inc's) is
Fibre2Fashion's. Great for checking out definitions of different types of dyeing - which honestly I'm still fuzzy on. (If you want to get a glimpse of what my schooling was like just scroll down the first page and check out the definition of "Acetate", such things bring back panic attacks of Textile Chemistry and how bad I was).
Another great reference book (one that I still use to this day) and was like a textbook to me in school is
Fairchild's Dictionary of Textiles. This is a much more involved book with definitions of tons of terms. I would highly recommend it as an addition to any Interior Designer's libraries.
So there you go, a little bit of a different post for me, but one that I think will be a help (or hope it will be). Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
*Don't know if you ever have noticed, but my profile "name" is Dobbygirl. This is in reference to the fact that I started out my career as a Dobby fabric designer (fabrics woven on Dobby looms). I really enjoy the challenge of designing on a Dobby loom. So there's the story.
Image via Amazon.com
