Textile expertise

 

Lightfastness

Lightfastness is the fabric’s ability to withstand the impact of light.

  • It’s assessed in 8 steps with step 8 having maximum and step 1 very poor lightfastness.
  • In general, any upholstery fabric will fade to different degrees when exposed directly or indirectly to light. Man-made fibres are more lightfast than natural fibres. Eco-friendly dyeing procedures often don’t produce satisfactory lightfastness.
  • Dark colours are usually more lightfast than light and brilliant colours.

1 = very poor
2 = poor
3 = moderate
4 = farily good
5 = good
6 = very good
7 = excellent
8 = maximum lightfastness

Pilling

The surface of flat woven fabric might become rough and form little bobbles. In technical jargon, these are calls pills. They consist of fibres that protrude as a result of using the upholstery fabric and can develop into small spherical bundles.

Sometimes pills primarily come from other fibres - for example the wearer’s clothing.

Pills often occur when the fabric has been in use for just a short space of time. They can be removed with a fabric shaver. The device can remove pills without damaging the fabric. The durability of the upholstery fabric isn’t impaired by the formation or one-off removal of pills.

 

Rubbing resistance

Rubbing resistance refers to the resistance of the colour in upholstery fabric to rubs or bleeding onto other fabrics.

  • It’s assessed in 5 steps with step 5 having maximum and step 1 very poor rubbing resistance.
  • A differentiation is made between dry and wet fastness to rubbing. Eco-friendly dyeing procedures often don’t produce satisfactory rubbing resistance.
  • Dark colours are usually more resistant to rubbing than light and brilliant colours.

1 = very poor
2 = moderate
3 = fairly good
4 = good
5 = very good

Abrasion Resistance

Abrasion resistance is the upholstery fabric’s ability to withstand wear and tear. Abrasion resistance is examined using the Martindale method (DIN EN ISO 12947-2 compliant).

 

The method simulates natural abrasion of a seat cover by rubbing a sample of the fabric with a specified forced against a standard wool fabric. The test equipment works in intervals of 5,000 cycles. It measures the wear number (unit: Martindale) of abrasion cycles that leads to two threads being worn.

 

Plain Weave

Plain weave is the original and most simple type of weave that developed from braiding. The weft threads pass alternately over and under each of the warp threads. Both sides of a plain weave look identical.

 

Twill weave

In a twill weave, the weft thread goes underneath a warp thread and then over (at least) two warp threads and under one again etc. The next weft thread moves this pattern by one to the side (usually to the right) and one upwards. This produces a typical diagonal pattern that is called ridge of twill or diagonal twill. Both sides of a twill weave look different. The side with more warp threads is called a warp-facing weave and the other is called weft-facing weave.


Plain weave
Twill weave

ATLAS weave

Atlas weave is like twill because a number of threads are missed out.

In the atlas weave (also called a satin weave), the weft thread goes underneath a warp thread and then over more than two warp threads and so on. The next weft thread moves this pattern by at least two warp threads (usually to the right) and also upwards (usually by one). This produces a fabric on which the parallel threads on the top face dominate by far, which lends the fabric a sheen when light falls on it. The fabric has two sides, the warp threads dominate on the back (which is why in the case of twill weave a differentiation is made between warp- and weft-based atlas weaves).

There are not many different types of atlas because the weave points cannot touch one another. Two of these variants are striped and coloured satin. Switching between weft- and warp-based atlas makes fabric patterns possible (see damast). The most well-known type of atlas fabric is satin, which is why we talk about satin weaves.


Atlas weave