All fabric and leather upholstery coverings are made up of many things.
Sometimes if you want to do a little research on what a particular fabric or leather is made of and how the texture would affect the durability, some unfamiliar terms might be used.
In this article is an extensive list of most of the terms that would be used for a particular fabric or leather created.
Having this knowledge at your fingertips will help you get through the technical terminology sometimes used be manufacturers for this explanation.
As professionals, we hope these basic terms will help you.
Good Luck and happy learning! FABRIC TERMS ABSORBENT: This is the ability to take on and retain moisture.
The degree of absorbency directly determines how a fiber will hold soils and stains.
ACETATE: Very lustrous and luxurious to the touch.
Takes dyes, and tone on tone dyes very well and is resistant to pilling.
A synthetic fiber used to make fabric take on a silk like appearance.
Relatively low cost and is strong when blended with stronger fibers.
ACRYLIC: A synthetic fiber with a soft wooly feel.
Accepts vivid colors and retains its shape well.
Have fair abrasion resistance and excellent sunlight resistance.
Good in velvet and other plush fabrics.
BALANCE: It is the proportion of vertical (warp) to filling yarns.
The more even the balance, the more durable the fabric.
BACKING: A coating that is applied or sprayed onto the back of fabric to prevent seam slippage and excess wear.
BONDED FABRIC: A fabric consisting of two or more layers of cloth joined together with resin, rubber, adhesive, or foam.
BOUCLIS: A plain weave using uneven yarns with a loop surface.
This gives the fabric a rough appearance to the face of the cloth.
BROCADE: A multi-colored jacquard woven fabric with a floral or figured pattern emphasized against a plain background of a satin weave.
These patterns are formed through the introduction of additional filling yarns.
BROCATELLE: This is a variation of brocade.
The end result is that the fabric appears to have more depth.
CALANDER: Process of pressing fabric between two rollers or plates to attain a smooth or glazed finish.
CARDING: A process of opening and cleaning fibers, usually cotton.
This separates fibers from each other, lays them parallel, and condenses them into a singular continuous untwisted strand, called "slivers.
" CHINTZ: This plain tightly woven fabric made from fine yarns.
These yarns are processed with a glazed finish, which gives it a polished appearance.
Chintz can be plain dyed or printed.
COATED FABRICS: This is a surface coating.
Coated fabric finishes use substances such as lacquer, resin, plastic, or varnish, to give them impermeability for spot and stain resistance.
The higher quality coated fabrics can simulate real leather.
CORDUROY: A fabric made of cotton or nylon with ridges or cords in the pile.
This fabric is highly durable and cleans very well.
It is widely used as a high use fabric.
COTTON: This is one of the world's oldest and most popular fabrics.
Cotton is strong, versatile, soft, and resistant to pilling.
Fabric made of yarn spun and woven from the seedpod of the cotton plant.
This fiber is frequently blended with others.
Cotton is popular for home upholstery use because of its natural, environmentally safe properties.
DAMASK: A firm textured fabric with patterns similar to brocade, but lighter.
It is a glossy jacquard woven fabric with floral or geometric patterns, which may combine satin weaves with others.
FLOAT: This is the portion of a filling yarn that rides over two or more adjacent vertical (warp) yarns.
The smooth texture of satin-damask is the result of large floats in the fabric.
FLOCKS: The process of flocking is more of a printing method than weaving.
Gluing short fibers onto fabric backings, using an adhesive, makes flocked velvets.
The textures vary from flocked velvet to woven velvet.
Woven is softer.
HAITIAN COTTON: This fiber is loomed by using bits of seeds, stems, and other impurities.
Water can cause these seeds to release a dye that may cause damage.
Haitian cotton is woven using a basket weave.
The fiber is strong, but great care needs to be taken with this form of cotton.
It is highly absorbent, making soil and stain removal difficult and costly.
JACQUARD: Intricate method of weaving in which a head-motion at the top of the loom holds and operates a set of punched cards according to the pattern desired.
Jacquard fabrics include damask, brocades, and brocatelle.
LINEN: Fabric woven from the natural fine fiber derived from the flax plant.
Some properties of linen are high moisture absorption, no fuzziness, a natural luster and stiffness.
MOIRE: This is a high luster fabric.
Moire has a watered silk effect on fabrics.
This fabric is easily damaged by water.
A simple liquid spill can permanently remove the moir effect.
This fabric can only be cleaned with solvent, and should only be used in a low use or decorative area of your home.
NYLON: This synthetic fiber is extremely durable and long wearing.
Though fairly heat sensitive, this man-made fiber has good soil resistance, and low water absorbency.
Nylon has a high wear resistance and good cleaning characteristics.
It is less resistant to pilling, and has a soft but cool feel unless blended with other fibers.
OLEFIN: The highest stain resistance of all fabrics.
Olefin is extremely strong and durable, with high resistance to soiling.
This fabric can have a soft feel, depending on the tightness of the weave, and resists color fading.
PILLING: This occurs when a fiber is strong and flexible.
Instead of breaking off, the fibers elongate and twist together to form unsightly balls of fiber.
POLYESTER: Another synthetic fiber is very strong.
However, it does not resist some soils and stains as well as some other fibers.
Polyester looks very much like cotton, but has low to moderate resistance to wear strong light.
It has a very soft feel and appearance.
It would be a good choice for a low use area.
RAYON: This fiber is low cost and very versatile.
Rayon blends well with other fabrics, such as nylon.
By itself, rayon is a poor fabric choice.
Rayon should be solvent cleaned.
This is a natural fiber with many use and cleaning limitations.
SILK: This natural fiber spun from the cocoons of silkworms.
Silk is the strongest of the protein fibers, but is easily damaged by sunlight.
Silk is highly absorbent, making soil and stains difficult to remove.
This is a fiber that is best blended with more durable fabrics.
TAPESTRIES: These are complex vertical (warp) woven brocades often displaying pictorial scenes.
Tapestries are loomed on jacquard looms and are usually a blend of fibers to get the desired end result.
VELOUR: This is a term given to fabrics generally with a short cut pile.
Velour is usually cotton or nylon.
This fabric gives a plush appearance to whatever it covers.
It is fairly delicate and should not be used in high use areas.
VELVET: A cloth in which a succession of rows of short cut pile stand so close together as to give an even uniform appearance.
Velvet also, is usually cotton or nylon giving this fabric a very soft and luxurious look and feel.
The nylon velvet is more durable than the cotton.
The visual appearance of each is very similar, but the fiber differences should determine where it is to be used.
VELVETEEN: Velveteen is a durable, sheared pile woven fabric.
It is often manufactured of cotton or man-made fabric, which resembles velvet, though the pile is not as upright.
The fiber characteristics are the same as velvet and velveteen.
WARP: When a fabric is loomed, the vertical yarns are called warp or filling yarns.
WEFT: These are the yarns that run horizontally in a fabric.
The number of warp or weft yarns used, changes the density and the type of weave used, thus determining the end result.
WOOL: A natural fiber made from the fur of sheep and other animals.
Wool is exceptionally absorbent but loses strength when wet.
LEATHER TERMS ANILINE: this is the type of dye used to give the hide its initial color.
ANILINE DYING: this is the process of putting hides into a drum.
The dye is allowed to soak completely through the hide.
ANILINE FINISH: Also known as pure aniline leather.
Aniline finish leather is full grain leather, which has been soaked in aniline dye.
With this finish, no pigmented or clear-coated finishes are applied.
Only the best hides, which are relatively free of gross imperfections, can be made into aniline finish leather.
It is soft, pliable and considered the premier grade of leathers.
BRANDS: This mark is a simple, easily recognized pattern made by burning the cattle's skin with a hot iron.
Used for the purposes of identification, brands are usually cut out of the hides and do not appear on the finished upholstery.
BUFFING: Hides are frequently buffed, using a large sanding machine to minimize the appearance of gross imperfections, such as scratches or wrinkles, in the finished leather.
This process makes the leather more uniform, but also removes the natural grain and markings that make each hide unique and individual.
CORRECTED GRAIN: Top grain leather that has been sanded or buffed to remove any gross imperfections in the hide.
The hide is then usually pigmented and embossed.
DRUM DYED: This dying process is accomplished by tumbling leather in a rotating drum to obtain total penetration of the dye.
EMBOSSING / PLATING: Embossing or plating is the process that creates a texture on leather by impressing it with a pattern.
This is mechanically imprinted using heat or high pressure to create patterns like ostrich, alligator, or floral prints on the leather.
Top grain with excessive imperfections is frequently buffed smooth and then embossed with a grain pattern.
FINISHING: This makes the leather more durable, coloring substances are applied to the hide, which provide abrasion and stain resistance as well as color enhancement.
This process usually requires three or four coating operations.
Generally, the more finish that is applied to the leather, the stiffer it becomes.
Aniline or semi aniline dyed or vat dyed leathers, will tend to be softer than pigmented leathers, since this can be overcome by milling the hide.
(See Milling).
FULL ANILINE LEATHER: Aniline dyed and aniline finished leathers have no pigments.
This type of leather has all of nature's marks still fully visible, enhancing the beauty of the hide.
FULL GRAIN: Unaltered surface of the hide, which has been aniline, dyed but has not been buffed or sanded.
GRAIN: These are patterns or markings on the leather surface.
Naturally occurring grain is caused by wrinkles, marking, and pores in the hide.
HAND: The softness or feel of the leather is referred as the "hand".
Well, there you have it, all the major info on what these terms mean to you.
Good luck and happy shopping.