One of the most difficult assignments that merchandisers face is fabric counter sourcing. Experience may help but it is still difficult to figure out who will bring the right fabric quickly among many mills that handle all kinds of fabrics. Even if all swatches were 100% cotton, it cannot be sourced at just one factory because the content is not the only thing that matters when sourcing fabrics. Different factories make yarn dyed fabrics. Denim and corduroy also require special facilities. Producing functional fabrics like stretch requires a factory with long experience. Pang-Rim has new dyeing machines but no know-how for making stretch fabrics.
Before selecting the right mill for the fabric development, understanding the nature of the original fabric comes first. Analyzing fabric is quite easy. Pulling out a strand of weft and warp yarn and burning it helps to identify the content. If the yarn burns like paper with little smoke and white breakable ash, it is cotton. Drapery must be checked to see if the fabric is rayon or modal since burning it alone does not show this. If a certain fabric burns like cotton and has drapery like polyester, it is rayon. Acetate burns with black smoke and leaves hard black with the unique sour smell. If a yarn burns and melts quickly, it is blended. Almost 80% of cotton blended fabric is 65% polyester with 35% cotton. 20% is 50% cotton and 50% polyester.
Labs like FITI check fiber content and yarn count with scale and microscope. It is, however, possible to check these factors without the professional tools. Comparing the unknown yarns with those that have the content and type specified is the easiest way. Untwisting yarns tells whether or not they are ply yarns, which are extremely fine, lustrous, and expensive. Ply yarns have three plies of thread when untwisted. The price for Chinese ply yarns are reasonable. The most common type is the Chinese cavalry twill in 60/3.
The following is an easy way to identify blended fabrics. First, untwist the warp yarn. If it is twisted and burns like paper, it’s cotton. If weft is straight and burns with black smoke and scattered ash, it could be a cotton- nylon, cotton-polyester, or rayon-polyester blend. If the blend contains more than 30% of wool, the development should go to a wool mill. Cotton mills do not have facilities for wool. If the blend contains less than 30% wool, the development should go to an acrylic mill.
Identifying carded or combed yarns from open end yarns can be done by checking out the thickness. Compare yarn strands with others to see the thickness. Carded or combed yarns are usually over 30s and look very fine. Open end yarns are under 20s. There yarns are spun through a simplified process, made directly from slivers. They look rough and uneven.
Spraying a piece of fabric with water is a way to identify water resistant finishing. If water does not get absorbed, the fabric has water resistant coating. If the water gets seeped into fabric in few seconds, the coating is very weak. It probably rates about 70 out of 100. Another way is blowing on the fabric. Air gets blocked if it is coated. The coating gets also streaky when rubbed with an eraser. If the coated fabric feels slippery and wet, it is treated with Silicone. This hand feel is quite similar to micro fiber or silk. It is an expensive processing.
The method to check whether the dyeing material is dyestuff or pigment is to rub fabric on a white paper or fabric. If it gets stained, it is pigment dyed. If you put your sliver on it though it’s sort of dirty, it works better. No wonder with water if it’s available at the moment, as actually wet crocking test is done by this method. Wet crocking is always poorer than dry crocking we know. In case of Denim, this method is applied to check if it’s Indigo or just dyed with reactive dye stuff.
The names of cotton fabric being sold a lot recently are Canvas, Bedford cord, Calico, Sheeting, Shirting, Bengaline, Oxford, Drill, Poplin, Pique etc. Canvas is the canvas a painter draws on. Normally it’s 10 × 10, 65 × 42 and recent China quality is slightly transformed with more density in warp that is 70 × 42. If replacing 10s of warp and weft with 20/2, as mentioned before, quality gets up thanks to ply yarn. Recent along with popularity of Canvas, in fact they are not Canvas but just Poplin which is 20s or even 30s are sold as the name of Light Canvas. It’s kind of marketing strategy. Therefore I think that fabric classification by its name gets insignificant. It seems like that if they are slightly heavier plain cotton, they are called as Canvas roughly, also kind of marketing stretagy. It’s not only in textile field this kind of naming all with popular one. Nano technology is one of them. There are lots of cases that in fact they are not real nano size but named 10 nano or 100 nano etc. By their way, my finger is nano by ten million nano. I mean we don’t need to stick on each name of fabric. There are quite cases that buyers are using without knowing exactly, so we might waste time with searching for an incorrect stuff.
Bedford cord is a fabric having cord like Corduroy though not a real pile. It’s normally 16 wale size cord. Wale is a number of cords in one inch, 2.54cm. We don’t count wale of Bedford cord. It is used along with calling Pique though they are strictly speaking different. But lots of cases both are called at once, so I feel you can say Pique looks like Bedford cord.Sheeting is recently not used a lot but in the past it was popular as much as it took more than half of cotton consumption. It is called as Calico and it’s 20 × 20, 60 × 60 plain weave.
A lighter version of sheeting is shirting, 30 × 30, 68 × 68. Both are different in weight but were at similar price ranges. Shirting is used a lot by now for cheap cotton prints. It’s loose density-wise and not a combed cotton but after printing on it, if doing so called Schreiner finish that is a gloss finish sort of Chintz, it looks cool. It is used a lot for bed sheet or covers.
Poplin is one of popular shirt fabric and it’s 40 × 40, 133 × 72. Actually it’s the most used cotton shirts. After Spandex came out, women shirts came out in stretch mainly. It’s good for print vehicle. In the past most of men’s dress shirts was 186T which is 45 × 45, 110 × 76 T/C though now almost were replaced with cotton shirts.
Oxford is warp and weft are parallel and expensive shirting fabric but recently its range gets wider and some time used for outwear material in heavy weaving. Originally Oxford is parallel weave in both warp and weft but nowadays it’s mixed with Duck which is only warp in parallel. Polo’s oxford is famous. Drill is heavy twill fabric. Chino being famous for Polo pants is 20 × 16, 126 × 58 and if using more than 10s for Chino is Drill. And recently there is Broken Twill gets popular due to too much chino twill. Broken Twill comes in Denim quite a lot and it looks like half done HBT(Herring Bone Twill). HBT became famous for shoulder uniform. Basically the weaving looks like a bone of Herring, so it was named after the shape, interesting.
Satin is what weft goes beneath and only warp appears on the face, so it’s easy to get snagged, so brushing could cover this weak point. Especially Mole skin or Suede should be based on Satin weave. Mole skin and Suede looks like simple items but in fact they are picky and difficult, so there are only several factories which can treat with them correctly, so prices are high. If doing China quality for cheap price, there could be more tuition for hard quality control.
Pique is the pique from Lacoste knit but in woven item, pique is used along with Bedford cord as the same name. Honeycomb texture which looks like waffle is a kind of pique and it had totally different back and face.
There is a fabric called Bird’s eye. This is basket weave and if you look at closely, it shows 4 warps and 1 weft of plain weave. It looks as if basket shape.
Bengaline is a heavy fabric of plain weave with thick yarn such as 10s or 7s in weft, so it forms ridge in weft direction. Warp does hardly appear. Ottoman is a fabric of which face shows ridge one by one but recently both ottoman and bengaline are used at once, so you don’t need to tell them apart clearly.
Crepon is yoryu. Yoryu is the fabric having high twists in weft. Therefore it forms wave in warp direction. Mainly Rayon came out as yoryu quite a lot, but recently other fabrics frequently comes out in yoryu. 30 × 24, 68 × 44 are the original spec.
Velveteen and velvet looks quite similar but source of them is totally different. Velveteen is produced by Corduroy factory but Velvet is not manufactured by the factory making Corduroy. Velvet is made by totally different machine I’d like to remind you. This kind of confusion happens in Yarn dyed as well. Yarn dyed factory are dealing with mainly cotton, T/C and recently union fabric and that’s all and Corduroy is done by special manufacturer. So if you get yarn dyed corduroy, you feel lost the way to ask. But in this case though rare, you should go to Corduroy factory. Surely yarn dyed corduroy is not mainly dealt by many factories. Corduroy manufacturer doesn’t have yarn dyed facility, so he should buy dyed yarn from outside. Therefore if encountering troubles with this kind of fabric, appropriate measure is way too far, so it’s better go around this kind of troublesome item. In case of Linen in yarn dyed item, it’s not doable in general cotton manufacturer and we should find a factory specialized for Linen Yarn dyed goods. But if it’s solid, most of cotton dyeing factories are dealing with linen as linen is also cellulose fiber like cotton, so it reacts with reactive dye stuff.
Jacquard is popular, small pattern for example Pique is doable by Dobby weaving machine but the bigger pattern is to be done by Jacquard machine, so no matter what it’s cotton or systhetic, Jacquard should be produced by jacquard specialized factory. Recent cotton Jacquard factory except for Korea domestic markets disappeared and it’s not easy to find in China either. But synthetic Jacquard is easily seen in both polyester and union fabric. The border line between Dobby and Jacquard is the number of warp, if it’s more than 8, it’s Jacquard.
The next is wool. Once facing wool, initially you should tell apart worsted from woolen wool. Worsted wool is used for suits that is not that heavy so it’s easily distinguished but sometime like Tweed, there are several woolen wools which look like worsted one. About 99% of worsted wool is used for mans suits. As there are a few processing on the fabric, we can say that it’s quite easy to classify worsted or woolen wool.
Worsted wool has quite similar appearance to blended wool, pure wool and T/R which recently look almost like worsted wool, so it requires careful attention to tell them apart. (In fact fake wool, T/R is so great that it’s hard even for specialist to tell apart.) The method is yes to burn. Pure wool smells like hair burning and leaves no hard ash as it’s protein like silk. Blended wool smells like hair burning but leave debris that doesn’t easily break. T/R burns without smell of hair burning. And the difference of them is that worsted wool is not readily wrinkled and if it’s wrinkled, it’s flattened in a day but T/R gets crinkled easily and hardly recovered. Therefore Rayon would be better put less and Polyester more as much as possible in order to prevent wrinkles.
Woolen wool which is used for winter coat a lot has several types. Those types, weight and composition is the factors you should know to calculate the net price which is unlike cotton of which price is dependent on density and yarn count. The type of Woolen wool is determined by the length of hair and shape. Most of all are brushed so that the grounds are not seen. Melton which is used for baseball jumper the most looks like Felt which is non woven but packed sheet. So Melton is heavier than its thickness. This is the cheapest wool when comparing per weight. This is thin but weight is high so wool content tends to be low.
On the contrary to Melton, Mossa has short hair which is raised, the most common type. Beaver has slightly longer hair than Mossa. You know the beaver, think about the shape of hair when a beaver wet. There is longer hair than Beaver that is Cashmere type, very luxury 
fabric. Mostly it contains at least 80% of wool. Of course it’s not a real cashmere but looks like cashmere. Beaver is in fact rare and it’s presented when the cheaper one than cashmere is required.
There is transformed Mossa that is cut hair shorter than Mossa and it’s kind of luxury fabric. This type is called“Velour”. Mostly it contains more than 90% of wool and it’s consumed domestically in Korea. Don’t confuse with knit velvet, Velour.
The thinnest and cheapest wool is Flannel, the only shirting item among woolen wool. Recently there came out the quality version called“Highmere”.
Recently the longer hair than cashmere came out that is Alpaca. In fact Alpaca is contained by 15-30% only because it’s expensive. Mohair is a wool fiber which is long, curl and lust. The thing important is that only Alpaca and Mohair is a name of material and the others are types by finishing and the kind of wool of those are called Merino.
The woolen wool which has different face and back is of course double weave and they are to be separated by two sheets. Mostly they weigh more than 20oz for coat purpose. Most black and white so overall looking like grey is Chambray type of classical plain that is Homespun. There are lots of naps which look like sugar grains on the fabric face and those naps gives multi colors. It was so trend along with HBT recently. Angora comes from rabbit unlike other wool fibers which come from ram or lama.
There are two types of wool portion in woolen wool. First is Virgin wool and the other is recycled wool. Virgin wool is produced at the first and the opposite notion to recycle wool. It has high wool contents and luxury goods are woven with mostly Virgin wool. Cheap wool containing less than 50% of wool such as Melton will be probably woven with recycled one.
Generally others of woolen wool fabrics are Acryl, Nylon or Polyester and the amount of each depends on colors. Therefore each composition is marked as Others without distinguishing each. In China where synthetic fibers are short, others are mostly filled with Rayon, and the problem of this high rayon content is that wrinkle gets easily, however customer is hardly able to notice if it’s more wrinkled, I think. Telling apart recycled wool from virgin wool is in fact impossible but only in the country where recycled wool is not strictly controlled such as China or India, the woolen wool composition could be incorrect because of synthetic fibers that could mix into recycled wool.
Like in the relationship between worsted wool and T/R, in the relationship between Acrylic and woolen wool, there is few who can distinguish woolen wool from Acrylic. Acrylic is what we feel the cabin blanket tending to generate static electricity and pilling a lot. A long hair by heavy brush tends to pilling. We can check Acrylic and woolen wool by burning. Acrylic melt with bubble boiling and smoke, it leaves hard ash. Acrylic is used along with wool in quite similar appearance in knit and sweater, so it is confused with wool but in woven, acrylic is limited to be adopted, so it’s not often you should face the case to recognize.
Micro is graded by fiber fineness. The finer the fiber is, the more expensive and 
better it is. In the past the price differed quite a lot by fiber fineness but recently it doesn’t. If you feel its unique softness by buffing when touching, it is what having finer fiber. Normally it starts low 0.8d to 0.1d which is good quality. You can grade micro fiber by checking composition carefully. It’s because that in order to keep the fineness of fiber to the degree of 0.3d, the fiber should be split fiber or Sea Island fiber and it is not doable with 100% polyester. Therefore micro containing some nylon is a good quality. However there are several fake which is N/P in warp and weft with taking advantage of such fact they play as if they are real micro. The real one is what containing less then 15% of nylon.
Recently the most wonderful hand feel of micro is N/P/C union which is the most 
expensive micro fiber. It has unique hand feel that is softly wet and as if pleasantly covering you. In fact the micro touch came at the first time by silk sand wash which was sensationally great hand feel. Someone disregarded the care label for a silk blouse and crunched it into water to wash and then it was rubbed to sandy so the hand feel unexpectedly became so exotic which was they never met before, and it was not a long time for people to be charmed by it. The buffing hand feel of micro fiber has been stimulating people’s emotion since it was borne 15 years ago. Did you touch teddy bear recently? It became to have softer feeling than mink’s fur rather than a real bear once Acrylic Boa of teddy bear fur was replaced with Micro Boa. I think this trend will go on for a while.
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