Cotton Slub Curtains, Pair

Details

A pair of eyelet curtains in cotton slub woven in Bhiwandi, Maharashtra: a 20s cotton warp at 60 ends to the inch and a 10s slub cotton weft at 44 picks, which computes to 180 GSM and is what the cloth weighs on a cut disc. Three things are cheated on a curtain. The first is fibre, because slub texture is trivially imitated in polyester and once dyed the hand is close enough that nobody returns it. The second is width, and it is the one that ruins the look: a pair sold as covering a 5 ft window that is two 100 cm panels will hang almost flat when drawn, because a curtain needs about twice the track width in cloth before it gathers into folds at all. The third is light fastness, which no listing prints even though a curtain's entire job is to stand in sunlight, and a poorly dyed one goes visibly paler along its leading edge in a single summer.

• 100 percent cotton by FTIR, no polyester slub sold as cotton
• 137 cm finished width per panel, so a pair gives 274 cm of cloth and hangs at 2x fullness on a window up to 137 cm wide
• 180 GSM measured on a cut disc from the finished roll, not calculated from the yarn
• Light fastness grade 5 to 6 on the blue wool scale, ISO 105-B02, which is the test that matters for a curtain
• Wash fastness grade 4 to 5, ISO 105-C06, and azo-free below 30 mg per kg on the 24 restricted amines
• Pre-shrunk, under 3 percent residual shrinkage after three washes at 40 C, ISO 6330
• Eight rustproof eyelets per panel, 40 mm inner diameter, fits a rod up to 32 mm
• Unlined cotton slub filters light and softens it. It does not black a room out and we do not call it blackout. Slub yarn is deliberately uneven in thickness, so the surface carries visible thick and thin passages across the width, and that is the yarn rather than a weaving fault.