Technical treatise on furnishing textiles
DISCOVER IN THIS ARTICLE
This booklet does not claim to be exhaustive, but aims to help you understand how the products we sell are manufactured, so that all of you who are confronted with technical requests on a daily basis can respond in a simple manner without going into detail. We're going to tell you about :
- Textiles in general
- Different materials
- Weaving
- Different media
- Finishing (dyeing, printing, coating)
- Clothing
TEXTILES IN GENERAL
In our everyday lives, we all use textile articles for dressing, sleeping, washing and so on. This makes textiles one of the most important sectors, but also one of the widest. Whether for furnishing, clothing, bed linen, bath linen or outdoor wear, the uses are as varied as the technical characteristics of each material.
Discover the technical features of our products, to help you choose and make your own.
To begin with, there are two main categories of fabric:
- MAILLE is a fabric knitted in the same way as our grandmothers did, and found in sweaters, scarves, socks, pyjamas, some underwear, etc....
- CHAIN AND WEFT: used extensively in clothing, with shirts, pants, coats etc.... and is the essential structure of our home products. We'll take a closer look at how warp and weft is woven, its various applications, and its different supports.
THE MATERIALS
Various materials are used in the production of our products, led by cotton with 90% of our assortment, but also polyester, acrylic, bamboo viscose and other materials that we'll mention briefly.
There are three main categories of materials: natural, artificial and synthetic. NATURAL materials include plant-based materials (cotton, linen, jute, etc.) and animal-based materials such as wool from sheep, mohair or angora goats, or silk extracted from the bombyx silkworm.
ARTIFICIALS come from natural sources, but are transformed by man. Fibers are extracted from the cellulose present in wood or other plant matter, then chemically transformed into yarns. These yarns can be used to create fabrics with properties such as softness and shine. The most widely used artificial materials are viscose and acetate.
SYNTHETICS, on the other hand, are manufactured entirely in the laboratory from chemicals, often derived from non-renewable resources such as petroleum. Synthetics can have interesting properties such as elasticity, waterproofing, strength, wrinkle resistance, heat transfer, etc. Common synthetic textiles include polyester, nylon and elastane (polyurethane-based).
As you all know, cotton is a natural fiber supplied by the silky down covering the seed of the cotton plant, which grows from 1.50 m to 6 m tall, depending on the region. Cotton flowers are generally white. The main producing countries are the United States, the republics of the former USSR, China, India, Egypt (renowned for the quality and length of its fibers), as well as Africa and Asia, including Pakistan.
Once the cotton has been harvested, it is baled and delivered to the spinners. The cotton must be as clean as possible, with no impurities. It is then carded for the shorter fibers, or combed for the longer ones. Different thread sizes are then obtained, depending on the use required, but all are twisted to a greater or lesser extent for greater strength. The best quality yarns are twisted by assembling and twisting different yarns that have already been twisted. For cost reasons, we hardly ever use combed cotton, but mainly short staple fibers whose yarn is technically known as open-end.
Is a historic quality in our collections. It is extracted from the plant bearing its name, the blue-flowered linseed found in northern France being the most widespread in the world. The stems from which the fibers are extracted are the longest, the plant measuring between O.50m and 2m on the banks of the Nile.
France is a good producer, with excellent quality, but Europe, especially Eastern Europe and Russia, are the biggest producers.
The spinning process is different for cotton, starting with retting to separate the fiber used from impurities, followed by combing and then the actual spinning, which produces a continuous thread.
Yarn is given a number to indicate its size, known as the metric number (NM). The number for COTTON yarn is equal to the number of kilometers in one kilo of yarn. Example: if you're selling a good-quality comforter cover, you're selling a 30/27, which is the weave construction you'll see later, with a 50 thread in both warp and weft, i.e. a 50 number = 50 kms for one kilo of cotton. The larger the number, the finer the thread.
The titration is different for SYNTHETIC fibers, and for silk, we count in DENIERS, a one-denier thread measures 450 meters for 0.05g, unlike the NM, the higher the number, the thicker the thread.
WEAVING
The weave we're interested in is a warp-and-weft weave. The images below show the various components of a loom.
There are different techniques for interweaving warp and weft threads, known as ARMURE. There are three basic weaves: plain, twill and satin. From these three weaves derive declinations, combinations and special weaves that form numerous fabrics.
TOILE weave, also known as drap, is the oldest and simplest weave. It's the one we use for our cretonne and coatings, among others. Plain weave is obtained by alternately lifting the even and odd yarns of the warp, to allow the weft yarn (duite) to pass through. All fibers can be woven in plain weave. The resulting fabrics have neither obverse nor reverse sides.
Twill is a weave characterized by regular oblique ribbing on the right side. These diagonals are produced by the weft thread passing under one warp thread, then over several other warp threads, shifting one thread at a time. This is the case with our Vaucluse fabric, for example.
Satin is a weave in which the bindings (crossing points between warp and weft) are distributed in such a way as to conceal each other, resulting in a smooth surface that is often shiny on the front and matt on the back.
A natté (or panama) is a weave with two wires in a single link, and two weft wires passed between each lift of the slats. This gives a rice-grain effect, especially if the yarn is coarse. Semi-natté is a weave with two warp threads and only one weft thread. In our collections, the cantal, landes and Aveyron uni fabrics are half-nattés. These different substrates are woven with unbleached yarns and then printed or dyed after being bleached.
As the name suggests, instead of weaving unbleached yarns, we weave yarns already dyed in colors. We arrange them in a warp to make stripes by wefting a single yarn in a rather neutral color, thus leaving the effect of the warp colors. You can also weave in different colors to make checks, as in the example below.
In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard of Lyon created the first loom to reproduce woven patterns. To put it simply, the principle is that each warp thread in its link is connected to a mechanism that enables an unlimited number of weaves to be produced.
On early looms, the jacquard mechanism was located above the loom. It controlled a series of perforated cards which, using hooks, lifted the warp threads individually to form the patterns. Today, loom patterns are controlled digitally.
Weaving in pictures
ENNOBLING
This term refers to all treatments used in the textile industry to improve the appearance, texture and properties of fabrics.
For us, the first operation is bleaching. This allows us to obtain very vivid colors later on. The technique is simple, using hydrogen peroxide. Next come the various printing and dyeing techniques.
There are different ways of printing, depending on whether the substrate is natural or synthetic.
Household linen and furnishings are mostly printed using direct pigment printing, with dyes that resist light well, wash fairly well and are less resistant to abrasion. This is the technique used for natural fibers like cotton.
Artificial fabrics are scatter-printed.
Then there's the mechanical input of ROTATIVE printing with cylinders, which is what we use. Each cylinder is engraved for each color. For example: two cylinders for green to print leaves, three for pink to print flowers, one or two to print the background. The disadvantage of this technique is that the designs are rather small, and follow a ratio which is the circumference of the cylinder, generally 64, 82 or 102 cm.
Cylinders are replaced by very large frames, allowing very high ratios of up to 2.50 m. This is particularly useful for printing large designs on duvet covers, for example. Useful for printing large designs on comforter covers, for example. Printing is slower, therefore more expensive, and requires very long machines, around 40m.
In recent years, another form of printing has appeared: digital inkjet printing. It's different and interesting, because there's no cylinder. As a result, you can print any number of colors, on very large ratios (several meters high). The machine reads the computer drawing, and prints with a head fitted with nozzles that mix just six primary colors.
Unlike traditional printing, we use inks, but there are disadvantages, as pigment ink printing is not satisfactory in terms of color rendering. We are therefore obliged to print with reactive inks that require washing and fixing to reveal the colors, which is a little cumbersome to use.
A final technique we use is transfer paper, which consists in printing paper and then transferring it onto a synthetic substrate using only heat at 190° and pressure.
Unlike printing, where the dye is deposited on one side of the fabric and a pattern is formed, dyeing involves immersing the fabric in a bath to impregnate the fiber directly. The result is more durable.
There are many, sometimes complex, techniques used for dyeing. In our case, we use reactive dyeing for dark colors, which gives good results with use. We use the Jigger technique for small quantities. For larger quantities, we use large stenter frames where the fabric is circulated through dye baths.
FINISHED PRODUCT
The first operation is to pass through a stenter to give the product stability and a good grip.
This is achieved by passing the fabric between two hot rollers rotating in the same direction.
We can SANFORIZE: mechanical action between two hot cylinders rotating in opposition, which closes the weft threads and gives a soft feel and dimensional stability.
We can EMERIZE or scrape with brushes to give a very soft touch like flannel.
The fabric can also be bathed in an ANTI-TACHE product such as Teflon.
Last but not least, and this concerns us a great deal, we can COAT the fabric. This operation involves scraping a thin layer of acrylic over the fabric in two stages, to give it the extraordinary care and wear qualities that make our products such a success.
This is the last of our production operations.
Numerous workshops exist around the world, but labor costs when there's a lot of added value force us to relocate, especially for trimmings and entry-level curtains.
We still have a workshop in France and one in Portugal, for the eyelets and cushions, made on fairly simple sewing machines.
Robotisation does exist, but only for simple mass production.
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