Warning: burn test your fabric if fiber content matters

[politicat]

Once is a fluke, twice is coincidence, three times is trend.

Six times in the past 18 months, the fabric I have bought from one of the two chain fabric and crafts big boxes has turned out to have polyester fiber despite being labeled 100% cotton. Both big box chains have been guilty (the J chain and the H chain). These we never from the same bolt or even apparently the same run (widths varied).

Take a lighter and tweezers, and get a snippet before you have your yardage cut.

[TexasTowelie]

1. It's a new fabric called cotton plus. nt

[politicat]

4. FTC requires labeling of fiber above 3 percent.

So if something is labeled 100% cotton, it must be.

If there's something being marketed as cotton plus, the bolt end is required to show content. They're not.

[northoftheborder]

2. What could you tell from the burn? If it melted, instead of igniting, it has polyester?

Or from the smell of the burning.

[politicat]

3. Lots of things

http://www.ditzyprints.com/dpburnchart.html

Acetate smells like vinegar, silk and wool like burning hair or feathers. Cotton, rayon and linen smell like burning paper. Synthetics melt, natural plant fibers turn to ash, protein fibers char and self-extinguish.