Jacquard Fabric Mills Directory

How Jacquard Is Made

The name comes from the Jacquard loom attachment, the early nineteenth-century invention that let a loom control each warp thread individually, using a chain of punched cards that was an ancestor of the computer program. That individual control is the whole point: where a plain or twill weave can only repeat a simple geometry, a jacquard mechanism can lift threads in any combination, so flowers, scrolls, geometrics and even pictorial motifs can be woven directly into the cloth. Modern jacquard looms are electronic rather than card-driven, but the principle is unchanged, and the same idea is applied on knitting machines to produce knitted jacquards with patterned colourwork built into the fabric.

Because the pattern is structural, jacquard behaves differently from a print. There is no surface layer to crack, fade or rub away, the reverse side shows the pattern in reversed colours, and the cloth usually has more body and a richer hand than a plain weave of the same fibre. The family includes familiar named fabrics: brocade, with its raised metallic or contrasting pattern areas, and damask, a reversible jacquard whose pattern shows through a contrast of shiny and matte yarns, are both jacquards. Matelasse, with its quilted, puckered surface, is another member of the family. A mill that lists jacquard is therefore offering a capability - pattern weaving - as much as a single cloth, and its range may run from light dress fabrics to heavy furnishing weights.

Uses, Fibres and Specifying Jacquard

Jacquard appears wherever a garment or furnishing wants pattern with substance: evening dresses, jackets and waistcoats, skirts and tailored coats, ties and scarves, and, at furnishing weights, upholstery, curtains and bed covers. Fibres follow the use. Silk and silk-look polyester jacquards serve dress and evening wear, cotton jacquards serve shirts, dresses and bedding, wool jacquards serve tailoring, and synthetic jacquards serve upholstery and bags where abrasion resistance matters. When you enquire of a mill below, specify the end use first, then fibre, weight, width, pattern scale and colourways - pattern scale matters because a motif that reads well on a curtain can overwhelm a bodice, and a mill needs to know the repeat size you expect.

Two practical checks save time. First, ask whether the pattern you like is a running design the mill weaves regularly, or whether you are asking for an original design to be developed: developing a new jacquard design involves programming and loom set-up, so minimums and lead times are higher than for a stock design. Second, ask for a cutting or a swatch in the actual colourway, because jacquard patterns change character completely with colour - the same weave in tone-on-tone yarns reads as a subtle texture, while contrasting yarns make it bold. Judge each mill by the jacquard constructions its own profile names: a specialist will describe its looms, pattern range and typical weights plainly.

Using This Directory

This directory lists twenty-four mills, each linked to its own profile in the Fabric Mills by Name section, in India, Turkey, Taiwan, China, Thailand, Pakistan, the United States and the United Kingdom, plus additional listings without a stated country. The section also offers a dedicated Jacquard Search. For neighbouring cloths, see Jersey Knit Fabric and the wider Fabric Mill Directory. Thank you for using the Apparel Search Fabric Mill Directory.

Jacquard Mills Listed in This Directory