The weft, the warp and the bias… three terms that any fashion student should be able to tell you the definition of in a heartbeat, three terms that you cannot work with fabric unless you know. Now I’m not saying that I didn’t know these terms, I just occasionally had to think for longer than I would have liked, in order to not jumble up the warp and the weft. However this is no longer the case! I can now confidently define the different between them all, the weft runs from selvedge to selvedge, the warp running up and down the length of the fabric and of course the bias on the diagonal. I can now even go as far as saying I can identify the weft of fabrics easily when there is no selvedge, pattern or obvious colour weave!
When sending out samples to customers, one thing I learnt is the importance of sticking the product label on in the correct direction; the writing reading the same way as the warp. The reasoning behind this is simple, it avoids confusion from the customer. With the samples being sent out globally across a vase range of industries, it’s inevitable that there will be individuals who see the label the wrong way on the fabric and believe that what they are seeing is different to what they requested. In the first few weeks, I struggled with the designs. Some fabrics had a strip or a clear coloured weft; others had neither. With this challenge I quickly began to pick up telltale ways of identifying the threads. For example, the weft is always the looser thread, sometimes you can see this but something you have to run a finger down the fabric to see it move. I f I still can’t tell, I will pull the edge of the fabric slightly. With all the samples pre pinked, none of the edges fray, however if you pull the edge slightly, the weft threads come off whereas the warp doesn’t budge!
These are all little tricks and bits of knowledge that I had learnt over the past 8 weeks and I will keep with me for a lifetime. They will help me when I return for final year, as when laying out fabric for cutting, I will quickly be able to decipher which direction to lay the grain of my pattern pieces, hopefully speeding up the process!
Towards the end of this week, I got to select fabrics that I thought were a suitable fit for a customer brief. The company were looking for iridescent lurex fabric samples. A few weeks ago I would have been nervous doing this task and unsure of what to select that was lurex. This week however I felt confident putting together the selection. I have developed a good understanding of the different yarns, lurex being a ‘metallic’ look yarn, as well as becoming familiar with the stock in the department. I was able to complete the job quickly, which was received gratefully by the rest of the team, giving me a confidence boost in my ability to understand customer needs and fabrics.
I also have to add that this week, I found my dream fabric… Zsa Zsa fur! Named after the owners cat, the fabric is the softest faux fur I have ever felt! I’m not normally a fur person but this had me sold as soon as I reached out a touched it. I can definitely feel an impulse fabric buy coming on here…!
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