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Fabric terms, defined without the jargon.
The words that turn up in a construction sheet, a dye-house spec or an Incoterm line — each with a plain definition and what it means when you order from a mill.
Colourfastness
Colourfastness is how well a dyed or printed fabric holds its colour against washing, rubbing (crocking), light and perspiration. It is graded 1 to 5 against grey scales in standard tests (ISO 105 / AATCC), where 4–5 is good and anything below 3–4 usually fails a buyer's spec.
Cotton duck
Cotton duck is a heavy, firm, plain-woven cotton fabric, more tightly woven than plain canvas. The name is from the Dutch doek, meaning cloth. It is graded by weight in ounces per square yard or grams per square metre, and in the numbered (army-duck) system.
Fabric construction (reed x pick)
Construction is the shorthand that defines a woven fabric: the warp and weft yarn counts, and the threads per inch in each direction (ends per inch x picks per inch, also written reed x pick or EPI x PPI). For example, 20x12 / 108x56 means 20s warp, 12s weft, 108 ends and 56 picks per inch.
FOB vs CIF
FOB (Free On Board) means the seller delivers the goods, cleared for export, onto the vessel at the named port of shipment; from that point the buyer pays freight, insurance and risk. CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight) means the seller also pays freight and minimum insurance to the named destination port.
Greige fabric
Greige fabric (also grey, loomstate or kora) is woven cloth that has come straight off the loom and has had no wet processing. It is not scoured, bleached, dyed or finished. It is the base cloth a mill sells to converters, or the starting point before RFD.
GSM vs oz
GSM is grams per square metre; oz is ounces per square yard. Both measure fabric weight. To convert oz/yd² to g/m², multiply by about 33.9. To go the other way, divide g/m² by 33.9.
Kora / loomstate
Kora and loomstate are other names for greige fabric: woven cloth as it comes off the loom, before any bleaching, dyeing or finishing. Kora is the term common in the Indian trade; loomstate is common in the UK and Commonwealth trade.
Lab dip
A lab dip is a small swatch of your fabric dyed to a target shade and sent for approval before bulk dyeing. It is the reference the dye house then matches the whole lot against, assessed under agreed lighting to control metamerism (a colour looking right under one light and wrong under another).
Loom width
Loom width is the maximum fabric width a weaving machine can produce, measured across the reed. Most modern rapier and air-jet looms run 63 to 98 inches. Wide looms, which are rarer and more expensive, run to 120, 126 or 140 inches.
Mercerisation
Mercerisation is treating cotton yarn or cloth with caustic soda under tension. It swells and rounds the fibre permanently, which raises lustre, dye uptake and depth of shade, and increases strength. Mercerised cotton looks slightly sheened and takes brighter, more saturated colours than untreated cotton.
Nominated supplier
A nominated supplier is a fabric or component source that a brand or buyer mandates its garment factory or product manufacturer to buy from. The factory does the cutting and making; the fabric is bought from the nominated mill, on terms the brand has agreed.
Numbered duck (army duck)
Numbered duck, or army duck, is cotton duck graded on a US scale from about No. 12 (lightest, ~7 oz) to No. 1 (heaviest, ~19 oz). A lower number is a heavier cloth. Each number maps to an approximate weight and a standard 2-ply construction.
RFD fabric
RFD (ready for dyeing), sometimes PFD (prepared for dyeing), is greige cloth that has been scoured and bleached to a clean, absorbent, dimensionally-settled base. It is prepared for dyeing or printing but not yet coloured.
Sanforising (pre-shrunk)
Sanforising is a controlled compressive-shrinkage finish that forces most of a fabric's residual shrinkage out before it is sold, so the finished garment or product shrinks very little in the first wash. A sanforised cloth is quoted with a residual shrinkage figure, typically 1–3%.
Scouring and bleaching
Scouring is a hot alkaline wash that strips sizing, spinning oils and natural cotton waxes from greige cloth so it wets out evenly. Bleaching then oxidises the residual yellow-brown pigments to give a uniform white. Together they turn greige into an absorbent, dimensionally settled RFD base.
Selvedge (selvage)
The selvedge is the finished, self-bound edge that runs down both sides of a woven fabric, formed as the weft turns back into the cloth. It does not fray, and it carries the loom tension, so it can be slightly tighter or denser than the body of the cloth.
Sizing (in weaving)
Sizing is a temporary coating applied to warp yarn before weaving. A starch or synthetic size binds the fibres and lays down the surface hairs so the warp survives the friction of the loom without breaking. It is washed out again at scouring.
Thread count
Thread count is the number of threads — warp plus weft — in one square inch of fabric. It is a consumer-facing figure most associated with bed linen. A genuine 200–400 count covers most quality cotton sheeting; figures far above that usually rely on multi-ply yarns counted as several threads.
Warp vs weft
Warp yarns run the length of a fabric, parallel to the selvedge, and are held under tension on the loom. Weft yarns (also filling or pick) run across the width, inserted between the warp threads by the shuttle, rapier or jet. Warp is usually the stronger, more tightly-twisted yarn.
Yarn count (Ne)
Yarn count is a number for how fine a spun yarn is. In the cotton system (Ne, English count) it is the number of 840-yard hanks that weigh one pound, so a higher number is a finer, lighter yarn: 40s is fine shirting yarn, 10s is a coarse bag yarn.