Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Married Bolts Discussed
A lot of people like to get married in the Summer, so what better time than now to discuss married bolts? 
Let me start off by defining this fabric terminology. To me a married bolt is when the double and rolled bolt of fabric has more than one single length of fabric on it. In other words, it could be a 10 yard piece and a 5 yard piece rolled together to make 15 yards. If you really want to get shops mad, you could put 3 pieces of fabric on to one board and that will really drive everyone nuts. That is a fabric cardinal sin and we never did that. That all being said, our family of companies decided a couple years back to stop selling married bolts. Below, I am going to discuss why this happens and why the shops hate this.
When the fabric comes in to our warehouse, it typically comes in on large tubes in lengths up to 120 yards like in the image below.
This is what we call rolled on tube (rot) fabrics. These goods come in unfolded as opposed to how we ship the fabrics out on bolts when they are folded in half and rolled on boards. Since we obviously can’t ship out 120 yards at a time and no one is ordering that much of one pattern, we do have to double and roll the fabric to more manageable sized pieces i.e. 10, 12 or 15 yards that can be shipped to shops.
This is an example of how a married bolt is born. If we take a 120 yard roll and instruct the cutter (the double and roller) to cut 8 bolts x 15 yards you would think that things would be all good in the hood. However, what happens when the cutter starts cutting is that he might hit a seam which is where the greige (raw material for fabric) is sewn together. The problem now is 2 fold: 1. Some yardage was lost when cutting out the seams, so now we may have 119 yards for example. 2. The seam also could have fallen right in the middle of a 15 yard bolt. Oops. So now we have a 7 yard piece for example. One would be tempted to marry that 7 yard piece with an 8 yard piece and some companies definitely do that. This is where the quandary begins. As I mentioned in the beginning, we no longer marry bolts, so we set the 7 yard bolt aside and sell it as a short bolt, typically at a discount. The frustrating part about this is that the bolt is first quality, but was just unlucky in the cutting process and we suffer on the pricing. This is another reason why the fabric business is imperfect.
Here is another example of how the short bolt is born. If we happened to have hit the seam in the rot fabric right at 15 yards, we would have a perfect bolt. Don’t get excited because it rarely happens that way. Then say we cut the seam out and lost one yard or a 1/2 yard or something. Now we don’t have exactly 120 yards and the last bolt in the roll ends up being 14 yards or something less than 15. This is a short bolt that we call non-standard i.e. not 15, but typically we can ship a 14 yard bolt so that is a good thing. The bigger trouble arises with the married bolts.
Now I am going to put myself in the shoes of the quilt shop owner and explain how annoying married bolts are. Play along please! Picture me with scissors in hand. So today I was in the shop working the cutting table and Mary Jane came up to me with a bolt of A Competitor’s fabric. I ask Mary Jane, “how many yards do you want?” She wants 6 yards. As I start to unravel the roll, I notice, “uh-oh” a married bolt. Not only is it married, but the first length that I roll of is only 5 1/2 yards and Mary Jane wants 6 yards. This is quite embarrassing. Hmmm….as I scratch my head. What the *&^%! am I going to do? And in there lies the problem, plain and simple. And in their lies the reason why we no longer marry bolts. Marriage really is a beautiful thing, but not when it comes to fabric. Good riddance to short bolts!
Scott