Fabrics and Composition

The fabric library is one of the most consequential masters in GarmentFlow. Every Tech Pack picks a Fabric, every Sample is cut from one, every Production Batch consumes one. A clean library means clean specs, accurate costing, and reliable purchase orders.

Three related masters live here: Fabric, Composition, and Material Certification.

Fabric

The Fabric master is the canonical record for a piece of cloth. Each section drives a downstream calculation, not just a label on the form.

Commercial. Supplier, pricing, and the Item / Item Attribute fields that tie the fabric to a stock Item for purchasing and inventory. If the Item field is empty, the form shows a button to create the Item directly from the Fabric record — no jumping between doctypes.

Characteristics. The properties that decide how the fabric behaves.

Weight can be entered in either oz/yd² or g/m² — GarmentFlow fills in the other automatically. Denim suppliers usually quote in oz/yd² (type 10 and the GSM appears); knit suppliers quote in GSM. Enter whichever the supplier gave you.
Power % captures the stretch of the fabric and drives pattern selection: higher-power fabrics use smaller pattern blocks, because the cloth stretches out to the wearer's measurements on the body.
The Fabric Composition child table links to one or more Composition records, so "60% Cotton / 40% Polyester" is two rows, not free text.

Usage. Usable Width, Tubular, Shrinkage on X (%) and Shrinkage on Y (%). The marker and cut planner work against these numbers; shrinkage also adjusts measurement charts so the Tech Pack can show pre-wash measurements alongside finished ones.

Washcare tab. Washcare instructions are generated automatically from the fabric's compositions — a 95% cotton / 5% elastane jersey will pre-fill with the appropriate symbols. You can override any row to match the supplier's actual instructions, and the form renders a label preview once it's filled.

Environmental Scorecard tab. Per-meter impact (water, CO2e) is rolled up from the linked Compositions. Linked Material Certifications then adjust that impact up or down — GOTS cotton, for example, lowers the water footprint vs. conventional.

Composition

A Composition is a fiber — Cotton, Polyester, Elastane — with its own sustainability profile (water impact per kg, CO2e per kg, regional modifiers). Fabrics reference Compositions through the Fabric Composition child table with a percentage on each row. That structure is what lets reports answer "what fraction of our production is cotton-heavy?" or "what's our average water impact per garment?"

The standard fibres are seeded at install. Add new ones only when a genuinely new fiber appears in your supply chain.

Material Certification

Material Certification records the certifications a fabric carries — GOTS (organic), OEKO-TEX (chemical safety), GRS (recycled), and so on. Each certification adjusts the environmental impact of any Fabric it's linked to, and flows through to the Tech Packs and finished garments that use that Fabric. Structured certifications beat chasing PDFs every time a brand audit comes around.

A working example

A supplier ships a 10 oz denim, 98% cotton / 2% elastane, GOTS certified.

Create a Fabric record. Type 10 in the oz field — GSM fills in automatically (~339).
Set Power to match the stretch (say 15%), add Cotton 98% and Elastane 2% in the Composition table.
Enter Usable Width and Shrinkage on X/Y from the supplier sheet.
The Washcare tab pre-fills from the composition; adjust to match the supplier's care label.
Link the GOTS Material Certification on the Environmental Scorecard tab.
If no stock Item is linked yet, click the "Create Item" button on the form.

Now any Tech Pack can pick this fabric and inherit the full spec — weight, stretch, shrinkage, washcare, and environmental impact — with no copy-paste.

What to do next

Once your core fabrics are in, head to Size charts and points of measurement to set up the size scales your Tech Packs will use. Color (the Variant master) is covered alongside the Tech Pack — see Colors and the color library.