Textile Industry Vocabulary: Glossary of Fabric Terms Used in Garment and Furniture Manufacturing

This is a glossary of fabric related terms that are frequently used in the textile, fashion, and furniture manufacturing industries. This list will be helpful for aspiring fashion designers, furniture designers, and industry professionals.

PFP: Prepared for Printing.

Goods: Often used interchangeably with the word "Fabric"

Greige Goods = Gray Goods = Unfinished fabric. The fabric has been knit or woven but has not been bleached, scoured, dyed or given a finish.

Scour: A finishing process that cleans the fabric and removes impurities. The exact process varies for different fibers, but typically involves a detergent and possibly other solvents as well. When scouring is performed on un-dyed fabric, it usually results in fabric of a natural off-white color. In the true sense of the word, scour refers to the finishing process, but I have also heard people use the word "scour" to describe the resulting natural color.

BOW = Bleach Optic White = A bright white color.

Yarn Dye: The yarn is dyed prior to weaving or knitting. When the yarn is dyed and then after dyeing it is knit or woven, the resulting product can be referred to as a "yarn dye". Yarn dye stripes and yarn dye plaids are typical.

Piece: A roll (or quantity) of fabric.

Piece Dye: When the entire roll of fabric is dyed, it's referred to as "piece dye". The fabric is dyed after knitting or weaving.

Garment Dye: When garments are cut, sewn, and then dyed it is referred to as "garment dye".

Color standard: The color that you are trying to match when you dye or print fabric. (Prints will have multiple color standards, one for each color in the print.)

Colorway: A combination of colors in which a fabric/design is made. Each new combination of colors is a separate colorway.

Strikeoff: A small amount of yardage printed in order to try out a new print or colorway- frequently 5 -10 yards of fabric.

CAD: Computer Aided Design. Often, the resulting printouts are referred to as CADs. CAD can also be used as a verb ("Can you please have your designer CAD these colorways for me by tomorrow morning at 10:00?...")

Hand: Refers to the feel of the fabric; how it feels, how it handles.

Blotch: a term that refers to the background of a print design that has a large amount of ground showing.

Types of Layouts:

Tossed Allover: The motifs are scattered over the fabric in all different directions.

One-way: The motifs only point in one direction. (Usually facing up.) Typically, one way designs will feature designs that look better right side up than they do upside-down, such as trees, houses, characters, etc.

Two-way: the motifs only point in two directions.

Stripe: A design based on bands of alternating colors or multiple bands of different colors. The bands all go in the same direction. The design can also be based on motifs that go in the same direction, or can have motifs in addition to the bands.

Plaid: a design with sets of intersecting stripes.

Border: A border design usually has at least one edge that is clearly meant to be the edge of the garment- commonly used at the lower edge of skirts, and sometimes for shirts and tops or other garments also.

Engineered Design: A motif or pattern that is purposely designed to go in one specific area of a garment, cushion, piece of furniture, or other item. For example, a button down shirt might have a dragon motif printed on one shoulder; that is an engineered design.

These are just a few of the terms that are commonly used by textile, fashion, and furniture industry professionals when communicating about printing, dyeing and finishing fabrics.