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Once Welcome back to Arlington, VA for this year’s
AIC annual conference and exhibition. Testfabrics, Inc.
is pleased to once again be an exhibitor at this meeting
and looks forward to meeting as many of you as possible.
In our booth are:
Tom Klaas, Technical Director
Miranda Klaas, (Senior Fine Arts Major, Wells College)
Charla Alexis Klaas, (the little sister)
For those of you not familiar with our firm, permit us to
give you a brief introduction.
Testfabrics, Inc. is a sixty+ year old specialty textile
manufacturer and converter. We are very rooted in the international
textile industry and are the recognized supplier of a great
many ‘test-fabrics’ used routinely to evaluate
textile dyes and chemicals, finished textiles and any product
that has a finished textile component. Our products and
services are sold worldwide and they play an integral role
in quality assurance testing, particularly for color fastness,
for all consumer textile products. In addition to servicing
the textile industry’s need for controlled test materials,
we also work closely with the surfactant and detergent producers
providing them with similar test materials.
Don’t get fooled. We are a very small entity, a niche
of a niche of a niche.
Among our primary product lines is our stock of textile
piece goods that have been desized, scoured, bleached (and
unbleached) mercerized but without any topical finishes,
softeners, dyes or resins etc. They are known as ‘prepared
for printing and dyeing substrates’. We stock goods
from all the major fibers in both knits and wovens so our
clients have access to reliable test materials in quantities
they can afford (we sell from 1 m. on up). The key to this
inventory is that it rarely changes. Our clients require
the same substrates for their work all the time (within
reason). There are fabric styles we have had for over 50
years and more. Several are recognized ISO standard materials
for textile testing.
In the late 1960’s we were discovered by an emerging
group of textile surface design artists needing fabrics
they could dye without having to desize and wash them to
make them ready for dyeing. We now service thousands of
individual artists, instructors and quilters with ready
to dye materials.
Not long afterwards, the museum professionals also discovered
us. They were attracted to our inventory of desized, unbleached
but scoured, cotton muslin or print cloth, our style 400U.
It was in its own right clean and pH neutral and available
‘off the shelf’. As with any business relationship,
we began to pay more attention to the specialty textile
needs of this group and they responded with several textile
needs they had that we could fulfill. Many of them, like
style #400U, were things we already had on hand.
Today, we service museums with an ever-increasing number
of textile products and services; our program ad is attached
for your reference. We custom process, wash, dye, cut and
sew materials; we source specialty items and are ‘in
the textile business on your behalf’. Our museum clientele
continues to grow both domestically and globally and we
are glad to be able to provide necessary materials for their
needs.
Some of the more recent items that have been added include
the full line of the SKALA polyester threads from Gutermann,
popular for conservation and restoration work. The DuraVent
non-woven trilaminate that is both waterproof and air permeable
is beginning to find applications in storage and other areas.
We have extra wide polyesters, Artetco’s ‘polyester/linen’
for painting backing, DeccoFelt adhesive strips for relining
paintings, poly felts for cushioning, polyester fiberfill
batting, extra wide unbleached cotton sheeting for quilt
backing, the Vat Dyed cotton twills for exhibit design and
construction etc. If you don’t see it in the catalog,
please do not hesitate to ask!
We have anew 3 ring binder swatch book available that can
be purchased as complete set or you can purchase individual
sheets from the book.
There are some new silks, including an organza and a chiffon.
Note also that we have gone metric and sell by the linear
meter. We have some complimentary conversion measuring tapes
available for those of you that are metrically challenged!
Please feel free to take our catalog and literature and
certainly allow time to ask any questions.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Sincerely,
Tom Klaas
Technical Director,
TESTFABRICS, INC.
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