Design Talk

It’s tufted, it’s fuzzy, and it’s French for caterpillar! Chenille fabric is traditionally made by treating strips of tufted wool with heat rollers. Just like its name suggests, Chenille feels as soft as an adorable caterpillar.

Adding some shape to style! This type of jacquard weave involves cutting the threads on the surface of the fabric, giving the face of the fabric a fringed and frayed look, and setting it apart from more flat and traditional garments.

Peekaboo! This type of lace is created by punching small holes in a fabric, often in a floral pattern to give it a more traditional theme. Since it features clear holes through the fabric, you can see right through the pattern!

It’s woven, it’s textured, and classically colourful. Jacquards are fabrics made on a loom where the pattern is woven directly into the fabric with coloured yarns, rather than being painted over the fabric after it’s made.

Also known as the broken twill weave, herringbone describes a weaving pattern that looks like the bones of herring fish 一 hence the name! Herringbone can be distinguished by its broken and staggered zigzag, while other v-shaped patterns tend to be clean and even.

It’s patterned, it’s puckered, it’s French for quilted! Matelassé fabric was invented to mimic hand-stitched quilts made in Marseilles, France. The surface can often look similar to a standard quilt, but it usually has greater weight to help it elegantly drape over furniture.

The technique uses knotting 一 rather than weaving or knitting 一 to create ornamental decorations and detailed embellishments. This leads to especially thick and loose designs that look more homemade and rustic, just as if you knotted it together yourself!

This style of cloth is named from the Persian phrase “shir-o-shakar” 一 meaning “milk and sugar” 一 to signify its alternating textures! Seersucker fabric is woven on a loom with threads at different tensions, leading to ruffled textures. The mixed textures also improve air circulation, making them great choices for warmer climates!

Soft and distressed in all the right ways. Traditionally, stonewashing is a process where fabric is placed in a rotating drum with pumice stones. This gives the colours of the fabric a naturally faded and low-maintenance look!

Get ready for a soft, fuzzy, textural treat! Tufted features involve thick cotton yarns sticking out through a woven cotton base, making a frayed and raised design. One of the most common ways to do this is by pulling the yarn through the fabric before it’s cut and frayed!

It’s repeating, it’s three dimensional, it’s textured like a waffle! Waffle weaves consist of small rectangles formed by raised threads. This type of fabric is still quite smooth, but it has a natural texture to it that makes it feel more firm and heavy.

Rather than colouring fabrics after they’ve been made, Yarn dyeing is a process where each yarn is batch-dyed to a specific colour before it’s even been woven into a fabric. Different combinations of coloured yarns can even be woven into unique patterns!

Simple and crisp! Percale weaves have a clean matte finish, with a consistent pattern of threads going over one thread and under the next. Think of it like a crisp white shirt ー light, breathable, and securely constructed.

Sateen weaves have much smoother sheen on their surface, as each thread goes under three threads and only over one. To have a solid surface, this means they usually have much tighter weaving than percale weaves, meaning they can hold in heat much easier on cold nights.

Weaves tend to refer to how the threads of a fabric are put together. Look closely at any fabric, and you’ll see threads going in one direction on the front and the opposite on the back. These weave in and out of each other to help create a firm surface of threads!

Finished with flair! Hemstitches are decorative edges of linens, sealing the weave with something to keep the threads together. Sometimes this is done with tidy touches like embroidery, unusual textures, or even unique features like knotted threads!

While knife edge pillows have a seam on the inside, flanged edge pillows wear their seams on their sleeves. The fill of these pillows is sealed by stitching directly over the exterior, leaving a decorative flap of fabric around the edge like a cuddly ravioli!

As violent as it might sound, knife edges are actually just the cleanest and simplest ways to attach fabrics together. These just involve a standard seam inside the garment, making it look as if a knife had been gently run across it to make the lines around the edges!

Pillows with piped edges have a rounded trim around the border of the cushion, like smooth icing around the edge of a cake! It’s made by folding fabric to make a sort of smooth “pipe”, giving the edge a little more definition and keeping the seams hidden with style.

Curvy and playful all around! Scalloped edge pillows have a unique design of half-moons around the border of a pillow, covering up the seam with something fun and decorative to add a little whimsy.

These types of pillow closures have a snug flap on the inside to hold the pillow in place. This keeps it from falling out of the opening while you sleep, and also prevents the pillowcase from rolling up thanks to the tighter fit!

Panel printing is an automated version of a classic style called silkscreen printing, where flat panel screens press colour directly onto sections of fabric. Originally, these screens were pressed by hand, but nowadays, machines are used to press colour deeper into the fabric!

New technology brings new ways to print patterns! Digital textile printing uses small drops of ink through print heads onto a fabric, just like any ink-jet paper printers. Since the inks are mixed to make multi-coloured designs, you can get tons of unique colours all at once!

Smooth and continuous printing! With rotary printing, ink is printed directly through a continuously rotating cylindrical screen, which rolls over the fabric to paint over it. Since the ink is put right onto the fabric, it can lead to some especially bright and strong looks!