QUILTS & FABRIC: PAST & PRESENT


Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Headers & Cap-Sets Moda Giveaway

Samples of Alice's Scrapbook fabric
Cap-sets

A couple of months ago Carrie Nelson at Moda blogged about some fabric industry jargon I was not familiar with. The sales reps' samples like those above are called cap-sets.


I've got a set of Alice's Scrapbag---Four cap-sets showing the four colorways of all the prints. The Give Away is over but you may want to read about cap sets.
Spring 2015 Market cap-sets from Moda

More about Cap-sets

This is the format shop buyers see when they are deciding on fabric purchases. Each sales rep gets a set from each new collection to take on their rounds.

I looked online in old texts for a definition of cap-set and didn't find much until recently, so it must be a fairly new term for an old format. 
A cap set of upholstery samples from the 1960s.
I'd have called it a sample book.
Each piece is the same size and the cardboard seems to hold
a whole season's collections.

The swatches, sorted by color, are held together with cardboard folded over the top. Carrie says a cap-set is also called a header.


The Moda Warehouse right before Quilt Market


The pieces are cut by machine (we have some impressive cutters both mechanical and human) but the various-sized pieces have to be organized and evened-up by hand.
Then they are rolled up and each sales rep gets one.


Here's Carrie's informative blog post:
http://blog.modafabrics.com/2015/05/all-in/

2 comments:

  1. well, I want one! pick me! pick me!

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  2. Very cool. I have a few of these for 'Wizard of Oz' fabric by David Textiles from the 1990s but never knew what they were called. Thanks (and sorry I missed the give-a-way and trip back in time with Groucho!)

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