Fair to Middling: The name for the grade of cotton usually used in the spinning of yarns that will be used for the production of denim fabric.
Fibre: The smallest textile component. A near microscopic, hair like substance that may be natural or manmade. Are units of matter having length at least 100 times their diameter of width/ Fibres suitable for textile use possess adequate length, fineness, strength, and flexibility for yarn formation and fabric construction, and for withstanding the intended use of the completed fabric. Other properties affecting textile fibre performance include elasticity, crimp (waviness), moisture absorption, reaction to heat and sunlight, reaction to the various chemicals applied during processing and in the dry cleaning or laundering of the completed fabric, and resistance to insects and micro-organisms. The wide variation of such properties among textile fibres determines their suitability for various uses.
Filling (weft): The lengthwise, selvage to selvage horizontal, yarns carried over and under the warp. Filling yarns generally have less twist than warp yarns because they are subjected to less strain in the weaving process and therefore require less strength in pile-fabric constructions, such as velvet or velveteen, extra sets of warps are used to form the pile. A single filling yarn is known as a pick.
Five Pocket Jean: Means your jean has 2 back pockets plus 2 front pockets and a coin pocket inside the front right pocket.
Flannel: Any napped fabric be it, twill, plain, weave, printed. Yarn dyed or solid color.
Flax: A natural vegetable fibre composed mainly of cellulose that is processed from the stems of the flax plant. The flax plant yields long while the color can range from light ivory to dark tan or grey.
Fox Fibre®: Naturally Colored Cotton’ the fibres of which grow from seeds that already have their color and do not need to be dyed. It is believed that six colors (pink, red, lavender, brown, green, and yellow) were developed by the ancient peoples of the Americas thousands of years ago. Sally Fox managed to breed plants that bring the fibre quality of the wilder brown cottons up to that required by modern spinning technology. FOXFIBRE® colors row best without chemical, opening the door to organically grown cotton, the COLORGANIC® cotton. Three shades are available today, Coyote Brown, Buffalo Brown, and Palo Verde Green.
Gabardine: A distinctive 45° or 63° warp face left hand twill if single plied yarns are used or right hand twill of a two ply yarn is used fin the weft. Gabardines are made from any fibre not just cotton.
Ginning: The industrial process where seeds are taken out of picked cotton.
Good Middling: the name for the best grade of cotton.
Gray goods/Loomstate/Greige/Grey: Words used to describe fabric that is just off the loom woven but unfinished in any way.
Hand of Handle: The way a fabric feels. This is a very subjective judgment of the feel of a fabric and it should help decide if a fabric is suitable for a specific end use. Hand may be crisp, soft, drapeable, smooth, springy, stiff, cool, warm, rough, hard, limp, soapy… Finishing and garment was h affected the final handle of a fabric.
Harness: The frame holding heddles that have warp yarns threaded through its eyes.
Heather/Cross Dye/ Top Dye/Mélange: A mixed fabric color is achieved (the best examples are grey t-shirts, socks, or wool used in suiting’s) by using different colors of fibre, and mixing them together. Black and white fibre mixed will combine to give grey heather fibre.
Heddles: Steel wires, or thin flat steel strips held by the frame, with a loop or eye near the centre through which one or more warp yarns pass on the loom so that the thread movement is controllable is weaving. Heddles control the weave pattern and shed as the harnesses are raised and lowered during the weaving.
Hemp: The controversial fibre with the bad image, help is a low cost annual seed plant that grows in most climates. Hemp’s natural fibre and seed oil have over 25,000 possible industrial applications and these were once competitors of wood pulp, cotton, and petroleum, products like inks, paints, plastics, solvents, sealants, and synthetic fabrics. Hemp (officially named cannabis sativa, L, from the Greek Kannabis) fell victim to the anti-drug sentiment of the times when the U.S. Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937. The intent of this law was to prohibit the use of marijuana, but it created so much red tape that the production of industrial hemp became nearly impossible in spite of all the products that derive from hemp. In his October 30, 1998 editorial in California’s most conservative newspaper, the Orange County register, senior columnist Alan Bock stated that “Since 1937, about half the forests in the worlds have been cut down to make paper, If hemp had not been outlawed, most would still be standing, oxygenating the planet”
Herringbone: Herringbone is a weave here twill warp stripes are created by running twills in different directions.
Hoechst Celanese: Calls the company ‘a science-based, market-driven company, who produce and market chemicals, fibres and films, engineering plastics, high-performance and specialty materials, pharmaceuticals, and animal-health and crop-protection products” they are the largest a subsidiary of the Hoechst Group, a premier worldwide organization with 280 companies in 120 countries and an annual sales volume of $28 billion.
Indigo: Indigo is a blue vat dyestuff, that was originally taken from the “Indigofera tinctoria” plant by fermenting the leaves of the shrub. In 1897, fourteen yours after Adolf Von Bayer identified the chemical structure of the indigo, the chemical became synthetically manufactured. Indigo’s inherent features are good colorfastness to water and light, a continually fading and its inability to penetrate fibres completely. This allows the blue color in jeans made from indigo to always look irregular and individual. There is no dyestuff like it!
Intimate blend yarn: Different fibres are blended together to make a yarn composed of two fibres. The purpose is to a mix the properties and characteristics of individual fibres into one new mixed fibre.
Jean: Comes from the French word “genes” used to describe the pants sailors from Genoa once wore. While the historical definition implied that all jeans were made of denim, jeans today usually refer to a garment that has 5 pockets (two in the front, 2 in the back, and a small change pocket on the front right) and this style can be made using and kinds of fabrics be t corduroy, twills, or bull denim.