What are the fabric characteristics of brocade (brocade vegetable dyeing reproduces the royal style)

Damask

Damask is a famous traditional silk fabric in China. It is also the most exquisite and gorgeous triple weft fabric among silk fabrics. The fabric of brocade is a single-color warp satin, with at least three kinds of colored silk as weft satin pattern, and twill is also used as an auxiliary decoration during production. One of my country’s traditional silk weaving varieties. Brocade was developed on the basis of Jiangnan brocade in my country at the end of the 19th century. It uses satin as the base and more than three colored silks as the weft, that is, a triple weft fabric in which one set of warp and three sets of weft are interwoven. Eight warp-faced satin weaves are woven on a jacquard machine. Modern brocade can be divided into nine types according to raw materials: silk brocade, rayon brocade, interwoven brocade and gold and silver brocade. With exquisite patterns, gorgeous colors, tight and thick texture, and smooth and shiny surface, it is a representative variety among Chinese silks.

In order to show the nobility and delicacy of the satin base fabric, traditional brocade often uses plain patterns and is embroidered with patterns of plants and flowers such as plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, phoenix, peacock, tiger and other rare birds and animals.

In order to cater to the international trend, modern brocade weaving technology has also eliminated the gongbi patterns and adopted bright all-over large flower patterns to create luxurious fabrics for women’s outerwear.

Traditional brocade is woven from mulberry silk and dyed with natural plants. Today’s brocades, a few high-end ones use mulberry silk as raw materials, the mid-range brocades are a combination of mulberry silk and rayon, and the low-end ones can only be called imitation brocades, which use rayon or other chemical fibers to imitate Made of silk brocade weaving technology.

The most disappointing thing is that today, whether it is real silk brocade or simulated silk brocade, it is dyed with chemical synthetic dyes, which is very different from the royal brocade of the past.

The author wanted to restore the traditional brocade dyeing process and tried dyeing several colors and patterns, with good results.