Vintage Fabric: Determining the fiber of a fabric

I am giving a once-a-week x possibly forever (!) vintage fabric workshop in the Vintage Fashion Guild public forum. If you’d like to join in, you’ll find the workshop under “Fabric Friday” HERE.

You can also follow along here in my blog, where I intend to post some of the same content. Please ask questions! I love questions.

If you’re a vintage fashion dealer, you probably know all about how challenging it can be to decide what fabric your item is made of. Maybe you’ve even given up on trying! However there are some very good reasons to figure this out.

1. Customers often want to know. After all, some find wool irritating, some hate wearing polyester, some will spend more for silk, and so forth.

2. The fabric can help gauge the value of an item for selling purposes.

3. Knowing the fiber of the fabric can help date the item. For instance, nylon wasn’t available commercially on any real scale until after WWII, so a nylon nightgown most likely won’t date from prior to 1946.

4. Knowing the fabric makes you a more trusted and helpful seller.

5. You will have a better idea of how to clean an item.

If you are a vintage fashion buyer, you will have some of the same interests: How to clean, how much to pay and what you like to wear.

So I start this series with a bit about determining the fiber of a fabric.

This is just slightly adapted from the Determining Fiber page of the VFG Fabric Resource, which I wrote and compiled.



If you have a piece of vintage clothing without a fabric content label and you’d like to know what the material is made of, try the most accessible test out there: A fiber-burn test. The basic process involves snipping a small piece of fabric from an inseam, then carefully burning it with a lighter while observing how the fiber behaves (looks, smells, feels) during and after. You can then compare your findings to a chart.


There are a number of tests, some traditional but potentially inconclusive (such as dampening and creasing a fabric to see how it behaves) and some quite scientific but not accessible to the average person (exposing yarns to certain chemicals and examining them under a microscope). By far the most accessible test is burning.

Burning fibers takes practice, and you must start with a little caution. Tie long hair back out of the way. You should burn over a sink or bucket so you can allow the potentially molten fiber to drip safely, and drop your sample if necessary. You need a pair of tweezers to hold a small fabric swatch, and a lighter. If you burn matches of any sort you will pick up the scent of burning paper or wood, throwing you off for discerning the burning fabric’s odor.

If you are testing a finished garment, find an inconspicuous place to cut a small sample, usually a seam allowance. Even a few yarns are “readable” with experience, but a piece of about 1” × 1/4” is ideal. Hold one end of the fabric with the tweezers and slowly expose the other end to the flame of the lighter. Notice if the fabric readily burns or takes some effort to light. Also, note if the fire burns out or continues until all the fabric is burned. Smell the smoke as the fire goes out. Finally, when the sample is cool enough, feel the residue and note its color. Compare your findings to the standards in the burn chart, below.

Of course, many textiles are made of fiber blends. Pull apart warp and weft yarns and burn them separately, as the blend may be as simple as one distinct fiber in the warp, another in the weft. Another test is to untwist an individual yarn and burn the plies separately. In both these cases, try to bundle and twist together like threads so that you have a swatch of sufficient density to burn accurately. Other blends may seem inconclusive, but feature a “top note” that is discernible—such as the “burning feathers” odor of silk. Even knowing part of the fiber is helpful.

To train yourself about how a fiber burns, try taking clippings of known fabric samples and get used to each sample’s characteristics when burned.

You can find YouTube videos of fibers being burned, and that may help with the visual side of the process.

Several factors may effect how a fabric burns, including finishing treatments, density of the weave, and even the dye used.

Your senses also will help determine a fabric’s fiber content without burning, given a chance to learn. With experience, silk, wool, rayon, polyester, acetate—all fibers, are discernible just by look and feel. Spend time handling known fabrics; keep your own swatch book to compare. If you have a chance, be taught first hand: You may be fortunate to find a person who is knowledgeable about textiles and can guide you. Experience with a fabric mentor could make a complex project much easier and more memorable.



One technical test of fiber content available to the average person is microscopic examination, using a relatively inexpensive hobbyists’ or children’s microscope (just 100x magnification is plenty for this purpose). Photos of magnified textile fibers can be seen in books and online.

I don't own this, but I'm considering ordering this hand-held microscope: Carson MicroBrite Plus 60x-120x LED Lighted Zoom Pocket Microscope. (This is an Amazon affiliate link. That means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive a commission at no extra cost to you.)

On another level, a technical evaluation of solubility uses hazardous chemicals to test fibers. Generally these tests are only run in laboratories. One test of this kind, though, is available to the average person—using acetone. (Look for pure acetone among nail polish removers.) At room temperature, acetate will dissolve in acetone (brush it on with a cotton swab). Triacetate will disintegrate. Modacrylic and vinyon will soften.



I know that a number of people struggle with the fiber burn test for various reasons. (Someone told me recently that it sets off the smoke detector in her apartment!) What can I do to help?

Vintage Fabrics Basics

Because experience with fabric really ranges among vintage fashion enthusiasts, I decided to start a series on some of fabrics you are likely to find.

I am posting a once-a-week x possibly forever (!) vintage fabric workshop in the Vintage Fashion Guild public forum. If you’d like to join in, you’ll find the workshop under “Fabric Friday” HERE.

You can also follow along here in my blog, where I intend to post some of the same content. Please ask questions! I love questions.

First let me tell you a little about my own history with fabric:

Some of my fabric books.

One summer, I read the Fairchild’s Dictionary of Textiles cover to cover (all 14,000 definitions—don't I know how to have fun?) and chose a collection of fabrics that seemed to come up in vintage clothing descriptions and in my observations. I didn’t, and don’t, consider myself an expert on the subject, but I love learning about fabrics.

I really have to know fabric better all the time. I sell vintage clothing, and my buyers and I want to know what an item is made from. To know this is to tell someone whether she will be allergic, how to wash or clean the item, predict how it will take dye. It is to know how fine it is, how long it will last, how the color will hold up. It helps make certain the age of the item. It gives a better sense of how it will feel when worn. Buying clothing online is hard enough, and knowing all you can about the item is just smart.

The year after I read the Fairchild’s I was a board member of the Vintage Fashion Guild, and I proposed the idea of the VFG website having a fabric resource. Everyone thought this was a good idea, so I got started on it. You gotta watch what you promise, because I worked five years putting just the start of the Fabric Resource together! Fabrics are complicated. As one article in an issue of the great American Fabrics magazine begins:

The history of textiles is the history of the world...politically, socially, economically.​

Gulp.

So much of human history has been interwoven with fabrics—any one fabric can take you back to ancient civilizations, or even prehistoric times. This makes many of them difficult to quickly summarize. I noted one of the fabrics in the Fairchild’s that was particularly mind-boggling for me, frisé.

frisé [free-zay’] 1. Originally the finest grade of linen made in Friesland, The Netherlands. It was strong, stout, grained, and well-bleached. 2. A French term for curled. 3. A coarse ratiné fabric that is made with slub yarns in a plain weave ( See RATINÉ 1.) 4. A looped pile fabric usually of uncut loops that may have a pattern cut into them. This term sometimes is used for TERRY CLOTH or BOUCLÉ FABRIC. 5. A coarse, stout cotton or linen fabric that is made in a plain weave with a flat, wiry texture and a pronounced rep or rib. Made in imitation of the worsted or mohair pile fabric known as FRIEZE. All fabrics listed in 1.—5. are used for upholstery. 6. A cut pile carpet of twisted yarns in solid color or of varicolored yarns.

You can see there are divergent histories here, along with terms that may not be familiar (they certainly weren’t all familiar to me). There are comments about usage, origins of the name, related fabrics. Not all fabrics have this much complexity in their definitions, but some have more.

I’m not trying to scare anyone off. On the contrary, I hope that knowing about fabric is interesting and inspiring to you as much as it is to me—or that it could be.

Starting with some basics

Before 1960, clothing rarely had any fabric content and care labeling. The Textile Products Identification Act of 1960 mandated fabric content labeling in garments. This information was usually printed on a hang tag that was removed before wearing the clothing. Our familiar sewn-in care tags were required starting in 1972. This was a huge step in making clothing easier to maintain. Now, we take these tags for granted, but our forebears had to know enough to make good washing and other care decisions themselves.

The fiber is from what the fabric is made, while the fabric is the finished product. Let me say that again, because it is really important:

The fiber is from what the fabric is made, while the fabric is the finished product.

Fibers can be natural: mainly cotton, wool, silk, and linen; or manufactured: mainly rayon, acetate, acrylic, nylon, and polyester.

The fibers can be woven or knit into fabric. The most common weaves are plain, satin and twill.

The anatomy of the basic weaves: plain, satin, and twill, along with knit​

Fabrics have a two-part name: One part is the fiber or fiber blend, the other is the fabric type. If you see a fabric listed as silk taffeta, you are being told that the fiber is silk, and the fabric type is taffeta. Likewise, a rayon jersey is a jersey knit fabric made of rayon fiber.

Next time: How to determine the fiber of a fabric