How to Read a BTCPL Swatch Card: Shades, Count, Construction and Stock

What is on a swatch card?

Each page in our swatch books is one design. The large piece of cloth is the base shade, cut big enough to feel the hand and see the weave at arm's length. Down one side are smaller swatches of the same cloth in the other shades we stock, each pinned to the page and marked with a letter. The printed header at the top names the design and gives its count, construction, quantity and finish, with a barcode for our own stock system. The foot of the page carries the office and warehouse addresses, so a page that leaves the building still says where it came from.

Shade letters

The small swatches are lettered A, B, C and onwards down the page. A letter is only a shade code, and it means something only together with the design number. Quote both in an enquiry. A design can have a handful of shades or a full run to G and beyond, and the base shade shown large is one of them.

The header

The header repeats the fields you will find on a product page in our catalogue. Count is the fineness of the yarn, construction (printed as Con) is the warp ends and weft picks per inch, and finish is the treatment the cloth had after weaving. Those three are explained in how to read a woven fabric specification. Quantity is the stock on the day the card was printed. The catalogue page shows the live figure, because stock is updated continuously.

From the book to the catalogue

Type the design number from the header into the catalogue search and the product page comes up with its specification, the metres in stock and, for registered buyers, the photographs. A buyer who has the book in hand and the catalogue open can shortlist a season's fabrics without a visit.

At our stand

At a trade fair the books sit on the table and the sample garments hang behind them. Buyers go through the pages, pull a shade swatch to the light, and check it against a garment cut from the same cloth. Each sample garment carries a fabric-details tag with the same fields as the card, so the cloth, the shade and the spec can be matched on the spot.