SHAIDIRECT LTD
Direct selling over the internet, from one office in Cardiff.
Seven lines, bought in small runs, despatched from St. Fagans Road. Every figure here was taken in this room, in millimetres, on the units themselves.
Seven is what one person can hold in her head: which run each line came from, how deep its hem is, what the spread was when I measured it. At eight I would start guessing, and a guess printed as a measurement is worse than none.
A short list is also the only honest way to sell cloth at a distance. You cannot handle it, so the measurements do the work your hand would have done. They are therefore mine, taken on this bench — not the cut size off a maker’s sheet, which is the width before the hem and the first wash take the piece in.
When a line goes, it goes. It is not quietly replaced by something nearly like it under the same name.
Every card opens with a tape drawn in millimetres: one unit of the drawing is one millimetre of cloth, the tape runs 0 to 2400 mm, and the pin stands at the recorded width. Set two cards one under the other and the pin further right is the wider cloth.
A width is only a number if you know where it was taken from. So: flat on the bench, unstretched, across the middle, hem outside to hem outside. Not the diagonal. Not held up by two corners, which adds millimetres to anything woven. Not folded and doubled, which hides whether the halves agree.
Recorded width, pinned
Plain weave, linen and cotton, unbleached.
The hem lies down without pressing, which on a plain weave is the thing that usually goes wrong. Widest to narrowest across the run: 24 mm.
Recorded width, pinned
Brushed cotton, twill, undyed.
Brushed cloth moves more than it looks as though it should. Widest to narrowest across the run: 34 mm. Hence ± 20 mm, printed rather than rounded down.
Recorded width, pinned
Plain weave, linen, stone.
The one line where length decides it: 1800 mm is what can be cut without a join. A runner offered to me with a join in it is a run I turn down.
The other four, and the full record, are on the current list.
Measure the thing the cloth is for — table top, pad, shelf — and put that figure in below in centimetres, with the tolerance you will live with in millimetres. The sheet converts, prints the band, then goes down the recorded widths: which fall inside, and by how much the rest miss.
Inside, the figure is the difference from your measurement; outside, the distance to the nearer edge of the band. A guide to reading the measurements on this list, and not a fit guarantee: a 1400 mm cloth on a 1400 mm table sits to the edge with no overhang: right for some tables, wrong for most. That part is your judgement.
| Line | Width | Tolerance |
|---|---|---|
| Plain-weave tablecloth | 1400 mm | ± 15 mm |
| Brushed cotton throw | 1300 mm | ± 20 mm |
| Bib apron, body | 650 mm | ± 15 mm |
| Cotton tea towel | 500 mm | ± 10 mm |
| Linen table runner | 450 mm | ± 10 mm |
| Cushion cover | 450 mm | ± 5 mm |
| Linen napkin | 420 mm | ± 10 mm |
A run is the smallest quantity a maker will cut, hem and press at one time — for mine, eighteen to twenty-four pieces. I take one run of a line, and no second run until most of the first is committed.
Four things are checked before I commit, in this order. The cloth is washed once at the temperature the care label will carry, dried flat and measured again. The hem is laid on the bench to see whether it sits down by itself. The corners are squared with a set square, because a mitred corner that is out shows on a table. Then every unit is measured across the middle, widest and narrowest giving the spread.
When the spread is wider than I am willing to print, the run does not become a line. The run sheet does the other half of this: how much of the runs taken is still uncommitted.
A tolerance is not a disclaimer. It is a measurement in its own right, and on a card sold at a distance it is the most useful figure on it.
Cloth moves: on the loom, where tension across the width is never quite even; in the wash, as the yarn relaxes; and under the iron when a hem is pressed. A piece does not have a width so much as a width within a range, and the only question is whether the seller tells you the range.
The figure is arrived at the same way every time: every unit measured across the middle, the narrowest taken from the widest to give the spread, the spread halved, the half rounded outward to the nearest 5 mm. Outward, never to the nearer number — rounding a tolerance down is how a measurement turns into a claim.
What it does not cover is what happens after the piece leaves here: your wash, your iron, whether you tumble it. The care label gives the temperature the piece was measured at.
Parcels leave on two days. On Tuesday and Friday the orders in hand are packed on the same bench the measuring is done on, walked to the counter, and the tracking number goes out that afternoon. An order placed after the Friday run waits for Tuesday, and the email says so rather than leaving you to work it out.
Packing, the post days and the route a return takes are on the despatch page.
Questions about a measurement go to sales@shaidirect.shop and come to the bench. Name the line, give me your figure and say what you measured it with. I will take the tape to the unit that would be packed for you and reply with that figure — not the one on the card, the one on the piece.
If a line is wrong for what you are doing I would far rather say so in an email than have it come back in a parcel. That is what a list of seven is for: nobody stands between you and the person who measured them.