Glossary
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C
Cable Twist: Fabric construction whereby each successive twist is in the opposite direction to the preceding twist.
CAD: Computer Aided Design. Important tool for textile & fashion designers.
Calico: Indian cotton originally from Calcutta. Inexpensive and made in colours on white or contrasting backgrounds.
Camel Hair: Very soft & luxurious underhair from a camel, similar to wool. Often used in blends with wool for mens apparrel & furnishings. Natural colours range from tan to brown.
Carding: This is a process of cleaning textile fibres by separating them from one another by laying them parallel forming a thin web, then condensing them into a single untwisted stand or bunch of fibres. This is known as a ‘sliver’.
Cashmere: The raw material comes from the fine undercoat hair of the cashmere goat which is found in Tibet, Kashmir India, Iran, Ira &Southwest China. Authentic cashmere has a brown shade of colour, is extremely soft and is cylindrical.
Cavalry Twill: Traditionally the twill weave is on a 63 degree angle. It is normally a strong and rugged cloth with a pronounced cord.
Chiffon: Is very light and nornally transparent and comes in plain weaves. The term itself implies thinness and a gauze like structure. Originally it was made of silk however now it is available in a variety of fibres.
Chinchilla Cloth: Conventional heavy twill weave coatings which have a songy napped surface which is filled into tufts to resemble chinchilla fur. Normally made from wool or wool cotton blends in coating weights.
Colourfast: This is used to describe fabrics for sufficient colour retention. All textile dyes are rated according to colour life span.
Combing: A process for removing short fibres from cotton fabric that has been carded. Combed yarn is superior to carded yarn due to being more compact. The finest cottons are made from combed yarn.
Continuous Dyeing: This process is when textiles are continuously fed into a dye range for colouring. It is more economical than batch dyeing.
Coduroy: This cloth is usually all cotton and the back of the fabric is plain or twill weave. It is created by a cut filling pile-cloth with narrow to wide wales which run in the warp direction and this is made possible by using an extra set of filling yarns in the construction.
Cotton: Is created from soft vegetable fibre obtained from the seed pod of the cotton plant . It originates back as far as 3,000 B.C.
Count of Cloth: This refers to the number of picks and ends per inch in a woven fabric.
Course: This refers to the row of stitches across a knitted fabric.
Crepe: Is available in a number of lightweight fabrics which are distinctly recognizable by a crinkly surface created by the use of hard twist yarns, finish, weave &construction.
Cross Dyeing: Different fibres in a blended cloth are dyed via different hues in the same dye bath.
