How things are measured

Everything on the cards comes out of this one procedure, done on the bench at St. Fagans Road with a steel tape and a two-metre rule. It is written out here so that any figure on this site can be checked against the method that produced it.

01The convention, in one place

A piece is laid flat on the bench, smoothed by hand but not pulled. The tape reads from the outside edge of one hem to the outside edge of the other, across the middle of the piece. Width first, then length, then the hem depth on its own.

Three things are deliberately not done. The piece is not held up by two corners, which stretches anything woven by a few millimetres and flatters the figure. It is not folded in half and doubled, which halves the work and hides whether the two halves agree. And it is not measured hem line to hem line, which gives a smaller number than the one you will see when the piece is on your table.

02Across the middle, and why

There are three places a width could honestly be taken on a hemmed piece, and they do not give the same answer. Near a hem the cloth has been turned twice and sewn, so it is held in; across the middle it is as the loom left it. On a plain weave the difference between the two is small. On a brushed twill it can be most of the tolerance.

The two dashed lines are the readings a hem would flatter. The solid line, across the middle and hem outside to hem outside, is the one that goes on the card.

03Washed first, measured after

Nothing is measured out of the bale. Every unit is washed once at the temperature its care label will carry, dried flat, and measured after that. This is the single biggest reason the figures here are not the figures on a maker’s sheet.

The tea towel on the list is the plainest case. It was cut at 520 mm across and measures 500 mm after one wash at 60. A waffle weave takes up in the first wash and then holds, so 500 mm is the number that will still be true in a year, and 520 mm is a number that was only ever true in the maker’s cutting room.

The care label temperature is therefore part of the measurement, not an aftercare note. Wash something hotter than the label says and the figure on the card stops applying, because the piece on your table is no longer the piece that was measured here.

04The spread, and the tolerance that follows from it

Every unit in a run is measured, not a sample of three. The narrowest and the widest give the spread, and two figures come out of it. The recorded width is the middle of the spread, taken to the nearest 5 mm. The tolerance is half the spread, rounded outward to the nearest 5 mm — outward, so the band always contains the whole run rather than most of it.

The brushed cotton throw, unit by unit. The narrowest measured 1283 mm and the widest 1317 mm, so the card records 1300 mm and prints ± 20 mm — a band that holds every unit in the run with 3 mm to spare at each end.

That is the whole of it. There is no allowance added for anything else and no figure smoothed to look tidier. Where the spread is wide the tolerance is wide and says so, which is why the throw prints ± 20 mm and the cushion cover, cut from canvas that barely moves, prints ± 5 mm.

05The run sheet

The other arithmetic in this office is counting. A run is what a maker cuts and finishes at one time; what matters day to day is how much of the runs taken is still uncommitted, because that is the number that decides whether a card stays up.

Run-quantity sheet

Units per run What the maker cuts at one time.

Runs taken Of this line, to date.

Units already committed Packed, or promised in an email.

Units in hand: 24 × 3 = 72 units
Less what is committed: 72 − 41 = 31 units
Where that leaves the line: 31 units uncommitted of 72 in hand.
If another run were taken: A further run of 24 would take the total to 96 units.

A sheet for keeping the runs straight. It is a guide to the arithmetic and not a statement of availability: a unit counts as committed the moment it is packed or promised in an email, and the sheet only knows what has been entered into it.

A second run is taken when the uncommitted figure drops to about a sixth of a run and the line is one I would buy again. If it comes in outside the printed tolerance it becomes its own card with its own figures, as set out on the current list.

06Checking a figure before you order

If a measurement matters to the millimetre, write to sales@shaidirect.shop and name the line. The unit that would be packed for you goes on the bench, is measured again in front of the email, and the reply carries that figure and the date it was taken — the piece, not the card.

The comparator on the opening page does the other half of this, reading your own measurement against the recorded widths and saying which of them sit inside a band you choose.