Piqué fabric

What is piqué?

Piqué, also known as pique in German, is a fabric that is usually made from cotton. It is one of the double fabrics and has a three-dimensional surface appearance that appears to be quilted. This means that the surface has alternating raised and recessed areas.

How is the piqué fabric made?

The piqué is one of the so-called double fabrics. When producing it, two chains are used, one on top of the other, instead of just one. These two chains each receive their own bullet. They are connected to each other by regularly laying individual warp threads into the other warp and incorporating them into the respective weft thread of this warp. To give the piqué its structured surface, finer yarn is used for the top of the fabric and twice as many threads as for the bottom of the fabric. In the places where the warp threads are tied into the other warp, for example when a warp thread from the bottom of the goods is tied into the warp from the top of the goods, depressions are created. This creates the structure typical of piqué fabric in the form of raised and recessed areas.

3 different piqué qualities

The first quality is the so-called “real” piqué. This is made from two warps and two wefts, as described in “ How is the piqué fabric made?” “described. The second quality is the “half” piqué, which consists of two warps but only one weft. The third quality is the so-called “false” piqué, which is made from only one warp and one weft.

Properties of the piqué fabric

The three essential properties of the piqué fabric are its robustness, its breathability and its lightness.
The double weave structure gives the piqué its stability. A property that recommends it for polo shirts. Although it is a double fabric, the piqué fabric is still relatively light and therefore comfortable to wear.

Piqué, striped piqué and waffle piqué

The French spelling Piqué usually refers to the real Piqué. So a fabric with four thread systems, a plain weave top fabric and a coarser bottom fabric. The places where the chains tie in are visible in the outer fabric. It looks as if the top fabric had been stitched to the bottom fabric in a pattern. If thicker filler wefts were inserted between the outer fabric and the quilting warp, the curvatures (raised and recessed areas) could be reinforced even further.
The so-called striped pique shows narrow longitudinal ribs (stripes) on the top of the fabric. This material can be made in different ways. For example, through a filling warp and quilted wefts or through a hollow weft binding.
The waffle piqué is a two-thread system fabric. Its waffle-like appearance is achieved by weft and warp thread floats, which shorten inwards. The square relief patterns are created by regular thread floating. With this material, both sides of the goods look identical.