Passionate About Fabrics
Bored with wallpaper? Wallcoverings come in many foms. KOTHEA are now releasing 7 Raffia Wallcovering Designs each in a range of colourways.
Stardust is a classic weave of 100% natural cellulose. Suitable for residential or contract usage – if properly treated. At 106cm wide each standard roll is 36m long with a cut-length service available.
Via Flickr:
Raffia Wallcovering. 100% Cellulose. 106cm untrimmed. Can be FR Fire Treated. KOTHEA Luxury Fabrics @ www.kothea.com
Bored with wallpaper? Wallcoverings come in many foms. KOTHEA are now releasing 7 Raffia Wallcovering Designs each in a range of colourways.
Stardust is a classic weave of 100% natural cellulose. Suitable for residential or contract usage – if properly treated. At 106cm wide each standard roll is 36m long with a cut-length service available.
Via Flickr:
Raffia Wallcovering. 100% Cellulose. 106cm untrimmed. Can be FR Fire Treated. KOTHEA Luxury Fabrics @ www.kothea.com
Bored with wallpaper? Wallcoverings come in many foms. KOTHEA are now releasing 7 Raffia Wallcovering Designs each in a range of colourways.
Stardust is a classic weave of 100% natural cellulose. Suitable for residential or contract usage – if properly treated. At 106cm wide each standard roll is 36m long with a cut-length service available.
Via Flickr:
Raffia Wallcovering. 100% Cellulose. 106cm untrimmed. Can be FR Fire Treated. KOTHEA Luxury Fabrics @ www.kothea.com
Bored with wallpaper? Wallcoverings come in many foms. KOTHEA are now releasing 7 Raffia Wallcovering Designs each in a range of colourways.
Stardust is a classic weave of 100% natural cellulose. Suitable for residential or contract usage – if properly treated. At 106cm wide each standard roll is 36m long with a cut-length service available.
Via Flickr:
Raffia Wallcovering. 100% Cellulose. 106cm untrimmed. Can be FR Fire Treated. KOTHEA Luxury Fabrics @ www.kothea.com
Bored with wallpaper? Wallcoverings come in many foms. KOTHEA are now releasing 7 Raffia Wallcovering Designs each in a range of colourways.
Stardust is a classic weave of 100% natural cellulose. Suitable for residential or contract usage – if properly treated. At 106cm wide each standard roll is 36m long with a cut-length service available.
Via Flickr:
Raffia Wallcovering. 100% Cellulose. 106cm untrimmed. Can be FR Fire Treated. KOTHEA Luxury Fabrics @ www.kothea.com
Bored with wallpaper? Wallcoverings come in many foms. KOTHEA are now releasing 7 Raffia Wallcovering Designs each in a range of colourways.
Stardust is a classic weave of 100% natural cellulose. Suitable for residential or contract usage – if properly treated. At 106cm wide each standard roll is 36m long with a cut-length service available.
Via Flickr:
Raffia Wallcovering. 100% Cellulose. 106cm untrimmed. Can be FR Fire Treated. KOTHEA Luxury Fabrics @ www.kothea.com
If you were given one pound for every time an interior designer asks which upholstery fabric is most durable, you would retire quickly. The answer is more complicated than a single test result can convey, and understanding why is useful when specifying fabric for a client.
Martindale and Wyzenbeek are abrasion tests. They measure one specific property: how many times a fabric can be rubbed against a standard surface before showing visible wear. They do not measure fibre strength, yarn construction, weave complexity, resistance to soiling, light fastness, or how well the fabric performs when cleaned. All of these variables also affect how long an upholstery fabric lasts in use.
There is a close relationship between fibre strength and yarn strength. Yarns are twisted to add strength, and a tighter twist generally produces a stronger yarn. This is measured in twists per inch or per metre. Tightly twisted yarns tend to be smooth and dense. Weave design adds another layer of complexity. The same fibre in different weave constructions can produce very different abrasion results. A fabric’s rub count is the outcome of fibre, yarn, and weave working together, which is why a single figure cannot tell the whole story.
Martindale is the standard used in the UK and Europe. Wyzenbeek is the standard used in the United States. The two tests use different motions, different abradants, and different specimen orientations. There is no reliable correlation between them, and a result on one test cannot be used to predict a result on the other.
With Wyzenbeek, tested to ASTM D4157, a piece of cotton duck fabric or wire mesh is rubbed in a straight back-and-forth motion across the fabric until noticeable wear or thread break occurs. Each back-and-forth motion is one double rub.
With Martindale, tested to BS EN ISO 12947, the abradant is worsted wool or wire mesh and the fabric specimen is circular. The rubbing follows a Lissajous figure-of-eight pattern rather than a straight line. Each complete figure of eight is one cycle.
The following figures represent standard guidance for specifying by application. For heavy duty contract use, the recommended minimum is 30,000 Wyzenbeek double rubs or 40,000 Martindale cycles. For general contract use the minimum is 15,000 Wyzenbeek double rubs or 20,000 Martindale cycles. For heavy domestic use the minimum is typically 15,000 Martindale cycles. For general domestic use, 15,000 to 25,000 Martindale cycles covers most applications. For light domestic or occasional use, 10,000 to 15,000 Martindale cycles is generally acceptable.
At results above 100,000, the practical difference in longevity becomes less meaningful for most residential applications. The cleaning and maintenance regime applied to a fabric will have more influence on its service life than the difference between a 100,000 and a 200,000 rub count.
Some commentators question the reliability of abrasion test results. In the UK, test houses are independent and operate under British Standards monitoring. No individual fabric company is large enough to influence results, and it is in no supplier’s interest to undermine the authority of the independent bodies that regulate the industry. UK Martindale figures can generally be taken at face value when supplied with a third party test certificate from an accredited laboratory.
For the full technical methodology of the Martindale test, rub count classifications by application, and a detailed Martindale versus Wyzenbeek comparison, see: The Martindale Rub Test: A Complete Guide for Interior Designers and Specifiers.
For a direct side-by-side comparison of the two test methods, see: Martindale vs Wyzenbeek: Rub Test by Abrasion Explained.
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Luxury Upholstery Velvet is notoriously difficult for interior designers to consistently source. Sourcing a generic velvet is easy enough but often velvets vary greatly in quality with many being relatively cheap and scoring relatively well with Martindale results but they just look ‘cheap’. The look and feel of the velvet are, after all, two of several important reasons why you are specifying it in the first place.
A further problem is composition. When, for example, you say you want a Mohair Velvet that is what you want: a velvet made out of Mohair and NOT lots of other things PLUS a bit of Mohair.
Whilst Mohair velvets are generally very good across the market they too can vary significantly in quality. So even when you buy a Mohair Velvet you are not necessarily getting the durable, luxurious, fantastic-looking product that you hoped for.
Further complications come when looking at Velvets made of a mix of yarns. Well, some of the mixed fibre yarns are actually excellent in quality!
So I guess I’m saying that there really is no sure and fast way of knowing what you are buying without actually seeing the fabric AND being assured of its technical characteristics, notably Martindale as we are considering upholstery here.
Most KOTHEA luxury upholstery velvets have inherent Martindale rub tests of in excess of 20,000 rubs with several collections exceeding 100,000 rubs for contract usage – 20,000 Martindale being eminently suitable for domestic upholstery.
In addition to non-velvet, textured upholstery we have many luxury velvets suitable for upholstery including Italian Silk Velvet (high quality, luxury velvet), Cashmere & Silk Velvet (the ultimate velvet), trevira Velvet (inherent fire retardancy), Mohair Velvet (high quality, luxury velvet),
Most of our velvet is available by the metre with no minimum quantities.
You’ve just ordered a new velvet and unrolled it to admire your purchase. But how do you re-roll it?
When you roll almost any fabric you should have the face on the inside. With a velvet this is the pile so you have the pile on the inside.
Some, but not all, velvet piles stand straight up others will ‘lay down’. for the former it does not matter which way you then roll the fabric (provided the pile is on the inside). However for typically longer pile which lays down (ie you can brush it flat with your hand in one direction only) then you should roll the fabric down the pile as you return it to its roll.
Hopefully that made sense. Good luck.
How to store Velvet.
The same instructions apply to all velvets.
Some background first: As an interior designer you buy and handle many fabrics. You may have wondered why some fabrics come in rolls of up to 100m whereas other come in much smaller lengths. Is this because of their value? The likelihood of them being sold quickly enough? Or perhaps longer lengths of some fabrics would be just to heavy for someone in a warehouse to physically carry or indeed too heavy for a courier to carry? Or perhaps it’s something to do with the thickness of the roll?
Well there is some truth no doubt in all of these reasons and others to. But one very important consideration with a velvet and especially with a Mohair velvets is the weight of the fabric and the weight of the fabric ON ITSELF. Because velvets have a pile they are thicker and heavier than other fabrics as they contain more material; similarly some velvets such as many mohair velvets have a dense pile…again more fabric and more weight.
There comes a point when the sheer weight of the roll of fabric becomes too much for the pile of the first part of the wrapped fabric on the roll and the inherent weight of all the fabric can cause damage to the pile. So velvets and especially mohair velvets have smaller lengths on the roll. Sometimes 25m but sometimes also 40m and 50m per roll.
So the length of fabric on a roll will be impacted by the weight of the fabric per linear metre AND the fact that a pile fabric can be more affected by added weight than other fabric.
So, how to store.
1. Store horizontally
2. Store with no other, external weight applied to the fabric.
3. Covered up to avoid exposure to dirt and dust i the air -especially if stored for long periods
Typically you will find that many of our velvets come to you in special containers where the velvet is on a roll and suspended by special cardboard ends in the boxes. For small volumes of velvet on a single roll there is often no need for these special containers. Where the velvets are supplied in suspended roll containers it is safe to store the velvet in this form. Ideally youwould have a horizontal racking system for rolls of fabric as lengths can easily be cut off as and when you need them but cleary most interior designers do not have this facility.
The safest method of course is to let your supplier hold the stock and order cut lengths from them. It de-risks you damaging the fabric. Unless of course the supplier can specifically reserve entire rolls just for you, you would have the potential problem of dye lot or batch variation of colour with many fabric dyes. There would normally be a charge for an additional service such as this.
