Even Embroidery has Its Own Jargon… A Textile Dictionary Link

When you’re looking for embroidery supplies or trying to find explanations on techniques, do you get a bit hornswaggled over the terminology? Sometimes, in the textile world, we run across terms that are not too clear to the everyday embroiderer.

Do you know what a bobbin is? What’s duck cloth? What’s a filament, when someone’s talking about “filament silk”? What’s it mean when someone says a certain fabric “has a good hand” or “handle”? You’ve probably heard of mercerized cotton – but what is it – what is mercerization? Cut on the selvedge – what’s the selvedge?

If you’re wondering about terminology, here’s a useful dictionary of textile terms. Not all the terms are of interest to the casual embroiderer, but when you get stuck wondering what a word means when you’re looking at textiles, it’s nice to have this resource handy!