Many of these fabric companies sell a wide range of products including: chenille, contract fabric, faux / fake leather, mohair velvet, linen velvet, cotton velvet, wool, hand woven products, natural silk, cashmere and damask for upholstery, curtains and cushions.
As a designer consider that there would be minimum quantities imposed by the manufacturer to cover special setup and organisational costs. Such fabric would not be wanted by anyone else and so you would have to buy the fabric by the roll – anything from 20m to 200m. So, although possible, we generally advise against it.
There are also more detailed reasons. From a manufacturing point of view it is very hard to guarantee a match to the colour you have – some dyes are better than others, so fabrics TAKE dyes better than others. Sometimes you know the exact original colour and other times not. Sometimes the fabric you are trying to match to might have a pile – so even if you workout a textile pantone colour, what exactly are you measuring? The fabric will look differently coloured from different angles.
The fabric you have may well have faded since purchase and there will be colour tolerances in what a manufacturer can produce from new. You would also have to consider that new and old would wear and fade differently – so there are many sources of ‘error’ or colour variation. Therefore our experience (from other manufacturers it’s the same) is that an exact match is rarely achieved and then the client/manufacturer relationship could be spoilt and a lot of time wasted by both parties.
This book approaches Interior Design from an academic perspective rather than ‘here’s a picture to inspire you.”
Many aspiring Designers will soon realise from this book that Interior Design is more than just ‘creativity’. It is a mix of people, process, technology and, yes, creativity too.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2WFoWQy-unk] Mixing Patterns – A video from an interior designer. You other interior designers should start making videos like this…great way to get new clients (sometimes)
New black curtains shading for the sun. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One of the specifications for the flame retardancy for contract curtains in the UK is Contract Curtains – BS 5867: part2: 1980: Type B.
Q: Is this the right one for you to use?
A: Maybe.
It is normally the responsibility of the interior desinger to determine what specification is required and to agree that with the local fire officer. Sometimes there might not be an interior designer. In that situation it is the responsibility of someone like, for example, the hotel owner. It is NOT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FABRIC COMPANY nor is it the responsibility of the CURTAIN MAKER.
You should also tread carefully. If from your research you decide that the correct specification is BS 5867: part2: 1980: Type B then you are still not all the way there. If you plan to use other materials with your curtain or hang them in a novel way or with some sort of coating then all those ‘extra bits’ are relevant. The fire officer needs to be consulted to see if your method of making and hanging the curtains is OK.
Also note that if you are having your fabric treated by someone like Essex Flameproofing or TEK or Textiles FR then once they have treated the fabric they may well perform an indicative test. However if you are then going on to do unusual things to the fabric whilst making and hanging the curtains then you may have to have the curtain material tested by a testing house – such as TFT Ilkley. IE they test the retardancy and compliance of the made up curtain and not just the raw fabric in laboratory conditions.
If you are unsure of these opinions then please consult your local fire officer for correct guidance.
Silk Velvet really is one of the great upholstery velvets. It looks great, it feels great and it can be up to the job if your upholstery velvet is chosen wisely.
If your last and only experience of a velvet was sitting on one in the cinema then you really haven’t lived!
Firstly let’s look at silk velvet’s suitability for upholstery. It can have a Martindale Rub Test result of over 20,000 – so it CAN be readily suitable for many upholstery uses.
Composition. Just because it is sold as 100% silk can be misleading and not necessarily relevant. Is this 90% silk velvet better than that 100% silk velvet? You just can’t answer that by simply looking at the composition.
A silk velvet that is sold as being 100% silk may in fact be a 100% silk velvet pile and 100% cotton backcloth. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. If it is the look and feel of the silk that you are looking for then maybe it’s best to just consider the pile (assuming the backcloth is up to the job of course). One of our fine silk velvets has a 100% pile and then a backcloth of silk and cotton – with the cotton being added for strength and the overall silk content being 90%. Compare this to our Italian Silk & Cashmere Velvet which has a 70% silk + 30% cashmere pile.
Next look at the silkiness or the shininess. If you are looking for a silk velvet you will usually want a shine.
Consider too the length of the pile. Again, there is nothing inherently good or bad about a long or short pile. A shorter pile may be more rigid and upright and that could be a characteristic that you are looking for. Alternatively, a longer pile will probably lay better in one direction – and you may well want that characteristic.
The weight of the fabric in grams per metre is often used as a measure of quality. That is not always true and could, for example, easily be distorted by a heavy and poor quality backcloth.
My personal preference would be to get my hand on a sample; feel it and look at it. What I look for and prefer is a slightly more rigid and consistent pile with a very dense weave. I would look carefully at the country of manufacture. I prefer an Italian velvet (mainly because it sounds better!) but if not Italian then I would certainly only consider a velvet produced in mainland western Europe. But don’t copy me, have the confidence to choose what you like – you are going to have to live with it. I would now choose my upholsterer carefully; many years ago a velvet-covered chair came back for me from a local upholsterer and the pile was not running in a consistent direction…it didn’t look great (read ‘awful’). So don’t, like me, assume that all upholsters know what they are doing with velvets, they patently don’t all know. I would then read our guide to upholstering with velvet – a designer’s worksheet and armed with a bit of knowledge quiz your upholsterer carefully.
We have already shown a video of the machine in action here. Of some additional interest are the following faux leather samples that recently came back to us from the Martindale testing laboratory.
Faux Leather After Martindale Rub Test
The image above shows the circular cuttings taken of the fabric after being rubbed 200,000 times. As you can see, this faux leather lasted well above the industry standard of 100,000 rubs.
Faux Leathers are otherwise knows as leatherette, fake leather and artificial leather. We have a short article on their many benefits for interior designer <here>.
KOTHEA® are the UK’s leading producer of fine, performance faux leathers for the contract market.
We have some of the very highest performance faux leather fabrics with Martindale Rub Test results in excess of 200,000…some of the highest in Europe. You can specify this quality of product knowing that you can totally trust its abrasion resistance characteristics.
We have a broad range of collections covering the varied environmental needs of hospitality (spas, restaurants, hotels), marine (yachts), office and household (apartment, villa) usage. Our technical innovation gives the best fabrics and our designers the best patterns and extensive colour palettes.
