Fashion Vocab: Yarn-Dyed

Are you drooling over these hemp colors like I am? These fabrics have such a lovely depth of color because they are "yarn dyed."  

Most fabrics are woven from undyed yarns. The "grey goods" fabric is then dyed whole for an even shade.

Some manufacturers will even "piece dye," which means they sew garments from undyed fabric and dye the garment later. This technique would normally be used by large brands who wish to test colors in certain markets and quickly re-stock colors that are selling well.

Yarn-dyed means that the yarns were dyed before weaving, as the name suggests. (Small point of clarification: in the industry, "threads" are what we sew with, "yarns" are made into fabric.) Sometimes yarns can be dyed unevenly to create a mottled or heathered look. 

Our hemp fabric, however, was woven from two entirely different colors. One color is strung on the warp of the loom (North-South direction on the garment) and the contrast is woven into the weft (East-West direction.) The yarns themselves are a bit slubby. The result is a rich, varied color that absolutely knocks me out!