A Soleil Voyage textile glossary

The base cloth is the foundation on which a design or finish is applied; it can be any material.

The brown flecks and natural slub of Grande Terre’s cotton-linen base cloth evoke an organic feel. Alternatively, Cordia’s blended base cloth combines the stability of synthetic yarns with the soft touch of natural yarns to provide a superior ground for the decorative embroidery, and Papeete’s solution dyed polyester base cloth ensures durability and longevity in high-sun indoor and outdoor environments.

Welsh for ‘wool’, crewel (or crewelwork) is an embroidery technique traditionally crafted using thick, worsted woollen yarn on a linen twill ground; it can be created with various stitches.

Cordia, our decorative drapery, is replete with embroidery in both crewel chain stitching and a range of matte and lustrous yarns. The interplay of these techniques emphasises depth and tactility within the tropical foliage.

Digital printing utilises inkjet technology to transfer a design directly from computer to fabric, producing large scale designs featuring many layers of colours.

Originally hand painted in the Mokum studio, Grande Terre was scanned at high resolution and digitally printed onto a natural cotton-linen base cloth, capturing details like the fluid sense of movement and careful colouration in the final textile.

Meaning ‘cut thread’ in French, fil coupé resembles embroidery but is in fact a fancy yarn woven into the weave of a lightweight fabric.

Fil coupé yarns are woven into Cowrie, our elegant wide-width sheer. The space-dyed woollen fil coupé yarns elicit the hint of an irregular striped pattern in a subtle, tonal palette.

A motif is a decorative design, repeated to form a pattern.

Motifs of hand painted tropical foliage recur throughout the Soleil Voyage collection. In turn representing the intertwining leaves and vines of a canopy in Grande Terre, a fresh, abstract take on monstera in the oversized Papeete, and a collage of unfurling leaves in Cordia.

A slub is a lump or pronounced thickness within the yarn, creating an irregular fabric surface.

Slubs are inherent in natural textiles like silk, cotton, or linen but they can also be manufactured to give synthetic textiles a more organic appearance. Constructed from a tactile blend of cotton and linen, the slubs found in Grande Terre contribute to the fluid nature of the hand painted design.

Space dyeing is a technique where two or more colours are applied to a skein (length of yarn) to create a multi-coloured effect.

The tactile and largely tonal Panie weave is enhanced by layers of rich colour and surface complexity, introduced via the space dyed weft yarns. In contrast, the use of space dyeing is more subtle in Vomo, where it delivers gentle multicoloured bursts of colour across the cream base, and Cowrie, where space dyed woollen yarns form irregular stripes within the pure linen.