Headers & Cap-Sets Moda Giveaway

Samples of Alice's Scrapbook fabric

Cap-sets

A couple of months ago Carrie Nelson at Moda blogged about some fabric industry jargon I was not familiar with. The sales reps' samples like those above are called cap-sets.

I've got a set of Alice's Scrapbag---Four cap-sets showing the four colorways of all the prints. The Give Away is over but you may want to read about cap sets.

Spring 2015 Market cap-sets from Moda

More about Cap-sets

This is the format shop buyers see when they are deciding on fabric purchases. Each sales rep gets a set from each new collection to take on their rounds.

I looked online in old texts for a definition of cap-set and didn't find much until recently, so it must be a fairly new term for an old format. 

A cap set of upholstery samples from the 1960s.

I'd have called it a sample book.

Each piece is the same size and the cardboard seems to hold

a whole season's collections.

The swatches, sorted by color, are held together with cardboard folded over the top. Carrie says a cap-set is also called a header.

The Moda Warehouse right before Quilt Market

The pieces are cut by machine (we have some impressive cutters both mechanical and human) but the various-sized pieces have to be organized and evened-up by hand.

Then they are rolled up and each sales rep gets one.

Here's Carrie's informative blog post:
http://blog.modafabrics.com/2015/05/all-in/