26 Apr 2012 No Comments
Fabric Dictionary: What is Crepe de Chine
Last weekend, as I was flipping an older number of Burda magazine, I fell in love with this pair of pants.
They look comfy enough to wear as lounge pants and so easy to make. And I like the jersey high waist idea. A lot.
The pattern suggests using crepe de chine.
I had no idea what crepe de chine was and when I asked at the fabric shop they showed me different fabrics that had little to do with one another in terms of weight, look and feel. Thus I researched :)
Crepe de Chine, also spelled Crêpe De Chine, (French: “crepe of China”) is a light and fine plainwoven dress fabric produced either with all-silk warp and weft or else with a silk warp and hard-spun worsted weft
Britannica says.
Translation: crepe the chine is a flowy, drapey, no-iron fabric.
What does crepe (or crape) mean?
Crepe is the Anglicized version of the French “crêpe”, the modern version of the old French “crespe” (curly). The origin of “crespe” comes from the Latin “crispus” (crisp).
So when we think of crepe we must have in mind a curly, crumpled texture, that can be either fine or coarse, as crepe can be made of silk, wool and synthetic fabrics.
Some crepe de chine photos:
Same Britannica also says of crepe that:
during the finishing operation, because of the abnormal amount of twist in the picks of filling, these tend to untwist and recover their normal condition, thereby causing the characteristic effect of typical crepe de Chine. Crepe de Chine textures of artificial silk are common and are often difficult to distinguish from the true silk.
I don’t know about you, but I have to touch a fabric to understand it, so next time I will be in the fabric shop I will be touching some crepes :)
What about you? How do you recognize/learn more about fabric?
