There several ways to make fabric colored. Some of the techniques involved dyes, some involve colored yarn fibers and some involve printed ink. It is helpful to know what to look for when you buy the fabric so you know what you are getting.
Solid colors can be made two ways. Vat dying and fiber dying. In vat dying the fibers are woven into the fabric and then the whole lot is dyed. This technique is more common with natural fibers than with synthetics because of the natural fibers greater ease in dying. The weaver does not need to set up a new loom pattern for each color. One loom run can yield many different colors and vat dying is cheaper that loom resets. Tye dying is a form of vat dying.
Fiber dying is the technique used predominately for synthetic fabrics as the syn fibers do not dye as nicely as natural. In this, the fibers are colored as they are processed so the color in permanently set into the yarns/thread. High end natural fabrics are also "dyed in the wool" because the final product has a better quality color result.
Patterned fabric can be woven in the pattern or printed with the pattern. When you look at a plaid check the back of the fabric. If both sides have the same intensity of pattern color the cloth was woven with colored yarns. If the pattern is vivid on one side and very faint on the other you are looking at a printed pattern.
Printed plaids are rarely if ever true to grain. Do _not_ assume the pattern will lead to a straight grain cut. In all likelihood it won't. Woven plaids are much more likely to be true to grain because the pattern in woven in as the grain is formed.
Most other patterned fabrics are going to be printed on rather than woven in. There are of course exceptions for some specialty fabrics such as satins (usually monochromatic patterns), moires (shiny. color changing patterns that are opposites on the other side) and damasks (tapestry and upholstery fabrics) which have a lot of loose threads on the underside of the fabric.
Printed fabrics can leave spaces where the base fabric remains raw. Washing will eventually fade a printed fabric. Woven patterns have the base fabric pattern as the cloth is made. They are much more durable as far as colors are concerned.
Those of us of a certain age might remember "madras" fabrics that were guaranteed to "bleed". Those were fabrics dyed but not set. The fabric was not treated with a "mordant" to set the dye and make it permanent. I doubt you will find that fad still around. It was all the rage for a while but has gone out of style. However, poor dye jobs will still bleed excess dye which is why you wash fabric separately before you cut it up to use it.
Just a simple tutorial for distinguishing what you have in your hand and how to expect it to behave.
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Originally Posted by STinGa
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