sidmona

Just a little bit of info I thought I would share that I received from an on-line quilt shop. I never new this so I thought others might like to know about it.

"Go into your stash and pull out a beautiful piece of fabric. Look at the selvage. Do you see the colored dots on the edge? The dots tell you how many times the fabric went through the printing process. The dots help the printer line up the design each time the fabric is printed for the next color.If the dots are not filled in perfectly the print registration will be off. Wow! Many of my fabrics have more than 10 dots. That takes a lot of work to provide that much detail on the cloth. That's one of the reasons why fabric in quilt shops cost more. There is more detail in the design and the layers of color add to more depth in the designt.

beachlady

Very interesting - always noticed all those dots, but did not realize about the process.

tlrnhi

Those dots also help you to coordinate colors to the fabric too!

sew_lulu

Didn't know that. I normally use the dots to coordinate my fabrics. Thanks for sharing.

tslowery

Thanks for info. ??? I thought it was just showing colors to match with.

Stitching4Fun

I do upholstery work and sometimes the design matches one side of the fabric to the other side. It is also good to show here it should be matched up

Barb

amma

Very interesting, thank you :D

SulaBug

:D Don't laugh, but I always thought those dots were ideas for color matching!! :D But it makes a lot of sense that it is really for the manufacturer!! Leave it to me. :D

kluedesigns

its also a way for the consumer to know if they are buying 1st quality of 2nds.

when it isn't perfect the manufacturer will still sell the bolts but they sell them cheaper to the stores as a 2nd quality product.

some shops will be up front and have a 2nd quality section or they call it the "outlet" section whiles others just try to pass it off as 1st quality.

Shemjo

Thanks for sharing that info! :lol: