Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: News On 108″ Quilt Backing & New Fabric Construction (PART 1)
Holy cold here in NY! It is a great day to be home in my heated house celebrating the President’s Day Holiday! Could you say, “time to start a new quilting project!” I can’t say that, but I am starting a new project…a new blog entry. Speaking of holidays though, before I get into the substance of this blog, I wanted to make sure to wish all you lovely girls, ladies, and women a very happy belated Valentine’s day. Happy Valentine’s DAY! I love you all…especially if you have hung in with me for this long reading my blah-blah blogs.
Today’s topic of discussion is 108″ quilt backings. The reason that this is worthy of an entire blog is because as a company we have decided to start making all of our new 108″ wide backings on a better-constructed fabric. Like the large majority of fabrics that we sell to the quilt shops, we are moving the 108″ backs to 60×60, 20×20 from the 68×68, 30×30.
To the amateur, it isn’t easy to distinguish these differently constructed fabrics, but to all the experts out there (you, me?), the subtleties are more recognizable. While improving upon the fabric’s construction, we have also decided to simplify the pricing of this product. Instead of having 2 price points, one for light colors (pigment printed), and one for dark colors (wet or reactive printed), we are going to use a single price point. The dark colors need to be produced using the more expensive reactive dyes and printing process…hence the higher price for the darks. If we didn’t use the reactive dyes on the dark colors, they would feel like cardboard. Not a strong selling point at all. So now when you get a stiff piece of fabric (from other vendors), you could speculate that the fabric should have been wet printed, but the vendor cut the corner by pigment printing the fabric. We do not do this because that is a cardinal sin.
Now that I got that out of the way, I wanted to delve a little further into the previous paragraph. Let me first start off by providing a brief explanation of the two different constructions mentioned above. 60×60, 20×20….this is what we call a sixty square.
What this means is that there are 60 yarns or threads in one square inch of the fabric going in each direction (north/south [warp] and east/west [weft or fill]). As for the 20×20 part of the construction detail, that describes the weight of the yarns. In terms of the yarn in a 60 square and in all fabrics, as the numbers go lower, the yarns are thicker/heavier…as compared to the 30×30 which is finer and less beefy or substantial. In spite of a 68×68 aka sixty-eight squares sounding like a better piece of fabric because there are 8 picks more in both directions (68-60=8), this isn’t the case. So in a sense, this is counter-intuitive to what logic tells us. What it really comes down to is that the yarn size is the distinguishing factor in our quilting fabrics scenario. If I haven’t totally confused you at this point with all the mumbo jumbo and math, the long and the short of this is that our 108″ fabrics will feel better. Don’t everybody cheer at the same time!
The first 108″ line that we will be selling on 60 squares is the new Prisms line. This line will be shown by reps in March, on fabric, and will be able to purchased for an immediate delivery. This line will be run in 10 color combinations. It was inspired by gems and stones. Make sure to get a hold of the fabric and see how nice it feels compared to the old 108″s that were made with 68’s.
Thanks so much for listening to my spiel. I hope this helped you further your fabric knowledge and will be another reason for you to continue to buy 108″ fabrics produced by our companies. If something isn’t clear about my explanation, let me know if you have questions or if I could provide any further details to clear up any confusion and solidify your understanding.
Happy Quilting! Stay warm!
Silky Soft Scott