Inside a Modern Upholstery & Drapery Fabric Mill

Over the last 50 years, fabric mills have gone from dusty, loud, clattering warehouses with massive wooden/metal looms to modern, clean factories with some having high-tech robots controlled by advanced computer technology.

It's these high-tech factories that allow companies like us to offer such a wide range of upholstery and drapery fabrics. Think of the sheer amount of colors, designs, fabrics - only a sophisticated and technologically advanced system could provide all those options at such a massive scale.

Let’s take a look at what a modern fabric mill that makes upholstery and drapery textile looks like from the inside.

Step 1: Designing the Blueprint

It all starts in the design studio. Teams use CAD software to create patterns, tweaking colors and textures until they’re pixel-perfect. 50 years ago, upholstery fabric designers sketched on paper and prayed the loom got it right.

Now, computers simulate how a fabric will look before weaving a single thread.

Step 2: Going from Fiber to Yarn

Today’s fabric mill works with two types of fiber: natural and synthetic. To prepare for the weaving process, natural fibers like cotton, linen, wool, or silk are cleaned, carded, and spun together to create strands.

Synthetics are loomed in a completely different way. Take polyester for instance. Thermoplastic pellets melt into liquid, extruded through spinnerets to create filaments (some with tri-lobe ridges for softness or luster).

Step 3: The Looming Process

Today’s modern mills use two different style fabric looms:

• Jet Looms: These blast yarns into place with air or water at 600+ picks per minute.
• Rapier Looms: These looms use mechanical “arms” that pass yarn across the loom like a relay race.

Compared to looms in the 70s, which broke down on a regular basis, today’s looms are able to run 24/7 with hardly any interruption in production.

Step 4: Finishing Touches

There are three finishing elements that most upholstery and drapery fabrics go through in today’s fabric mills: quality inspection, finishing treatments, and cutting and rolling.

• Quality Inspection: Today’s mills have lasers that scan for flaws in the fabric. Compared to 50 years ago when standards allowed one minor flaw for every 5 yards of fabric, today’s looms are able to produce near perfect fabrics with much fewer flaws.
• Finishing Treatments: Depending on the end product, some upholstery fabrics go through additional treatments after the looming process. For example, some fabric is bathed in stain-resistant finishes like Crypton® or are tumbled in giant dryers to improve softness.
• Cutting & Rolling: In order to ship fabric around the world, it has to be cut down and rolled into a moveable amount. As the final step in the fabric mill process, automated machines typically prepare fabric into 50-yard rolls, ready for shipping to distribution center.

Today’s mills also prioritize high quality fabric and sustainability. We see more recycled materials and water-saving dye techniques in today’s mills compared to 50 years ago. It’s no longer just about speed—it’s about responsibility.

Next time you sink into your sofa, or just are admiring your drapes, remember the journey the fabric took from a designer’s screen, to a robot’s steady hand, to the upholstery fabric supplier.