When starting out or beginning a new range, build yourself a database of fabrics from local suppliers so that you have information at hand that uses industry language.
I would advise that you contact a fabric warehouse. With their permission and kind support make an appointment to go into their boardroom, take 1 swatch header from each cubby hole in their range. It is not because you like or want the fabric it is, so you can have on hand examples of the kinds of fabric you are trying to source for yourself or clients. The swatch header will have a fabric swatch, the seasons colour range, the grams per square meter, fabric name from the mill and the price per meter. Sometimes the swatch header will be very specific and will specify the percentage of Lycra/elastic in the knit or woven and what the ratios of natural fibres to polyester are.
This database will give you examples that when you are describing for example: cotton stretch to a sourcing agent locally or overseas you can avoid describing fabric in personal terms “must be medium in lightness nothing to heavy its summer” means very little to the person a million miles away, who has no clue as to what your summer temperatures are. If you have 3 swatch headers all cotton one of 120g per m squared, 160g’s and one of 180g’s you can give guidance to how light or heavy the fabric is and parameters of acceptable quality.
Alternately if you are looking for something specific, say to duplicate an overseas sample or an existing garment that a private client absolutely loves to ask for a cutting, which can be taken from the hem of the garment. Cuttings cut through all language barriers and speak a universal industry language.
Different mills will have their own trade name for the fabric that they have manufactured. When making enquiries for a type of fabric the mill will often answer the enquiry with a trade name. For example, looking for canvas can be answered with stock availability of “duck fabric”. That means very little as to what is it, Canvas fit for manufacturing a beach bag or for Yachting sail? Either way a very different kind of canvas but still technically correct.
In my Master Classes delegates get a database of Fabric Suppliers that are reliable and offer good quality fabrics with very small minimum quantities.
I often get enquires about what a fabric is in pictures of overseas collections. The fabric is actually a finish that has been done after the garment was made. What you need to buy is a fabric in preferably white or cream that you C.M.T. and then do a dye finish.
Melanie Brummer from Slipstream +27 83 568 9150 is the dying authority; she is internationally published her book on dye techniques and very proudly has launched her online learning. She will be able to put you in touch with people who she has taught the techniques and the finest quality dye products.
When you get to C.M.T. stage in the garment you would need to find a cotton thread that is prepared for dying so that when you put the garment in dye the thread that has sewn the garment together also dyes, so that you are not left with a fabulous garment with white stitching all over.
Which leads me onto, one of my pet peeves: using fabric incorrectly, naively or to trying to save money. For example: Using a stretch fabric on a woven pattern or visa versa, this has caused some major production disasters.
The best example I can think of is using poly/cotton for cot linen and sleepwear. Please don’t, as I am sure you are aware that we all follow sleep cycles called a circadian rhythm. When we enter R.E.M sleep cycle the body temperature naturally elevates, when you sleep under poly/cotton as the poly does not breathe it causes the body to further heat which wakes us out of the most important phase of a sleep cycle as we would have overheated. On behalf of already tired new mothers, let sleeping babies sleep.
My feeling is that there is a potential awareness in a green market that would appreciate a product being marketed as good quality cotton which benefits natural sleeping habits; the quality would greatly outweigh the frustration of creasing cotton.
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