Plaid Upholstery

What fabric weight is best for upholstery?

Fabric weight does not correlate directly to quality nor thickness, so be sure to check the characteristics of your fabric meets your needs independent of the fabric weight. To explain fabric weight better this is the outcome of how a fabric has been woven, the finish and the type of fibre, in our case always almost wool! The weight of the fabric depends on the thickness of the yarn used to weave it, and the density of the weave (wool for example is much heavier than cotton).

Tartan fabric from ScotlandShop uses high-quality wool yarn woven in Scotland, and when using wool for upholstery there are lots of advantages:

• It can provide a soft material or be firm based upon the weight chosen
• Wool is resistant to wrinkles and stains
• Wool can withstand good levels of wear and tear and doesn’t significantly fade in sunlight
• It doesn’t suffer from mildew
• Pure wool is naturally fire resistant to domestic standards

ScotlandShop know our cars as we are based very close to Duns, home of the classic Jim Clark rally, and are well placed to advise on using plaid fabric for car upholstery. We usually recommend polyviscose plaid cloth for vehicle upholstery as it is hard wearing but conveniently machine washable. There is a more limited choice of plaids and patterns in the polyviscose material, however, so heavyweight wool is also a good choice as it is sufficiently hardwearing for the constant wear car seats receive and of course being a more luxury cloth, has a fabulous finish fit for the finest vintage vehicle.

See the images for reupholstering projects ScotlandShop have assisted in: the Cairn tartan in polyviscose was used in a lovely silver vintage Beetle, while beautiful reds and oranges of the Buchanan Ancient tartan match the steering wheel in this unidentified classic car project.