This guide will explain the different types of beach towels available, including velour, jacquard and terry, as well as explain what goes into the manufacturing process when making beach towels.

How are beach towels made?

Beach towels are made of a woven fabric, usually with the edges finished to prevent unraveling.  The most common towel fiber is cotton.

What is cotton?

Cotton  is one of the world's major textile fibers. It is obtained from the bushy cotton plant. The four main types of cotton are: American Upland, Egyptian, Sea Island and Asiatic. The flowers from which these different types of cotton are obtained vary in colour and texture, thus providing each type of cotton with varying characteristics. Cotton, in general, is very elastic. It can withstand high temperatures, has high washability and is very susceptible to dyes.

What is terry?

Terry is a cloth with either loops all over on both sides of the fabric or patterned loops on both sides. It is formed through a weaving process with an extra warp yarn to make the loops.  Characteristics of terry cloth are:  long wearing, easy to launder and requires no ironing.   Terry can be bleached, dyed, or printed (like screen printing).  Better quality terry has a close, firm underweave, with very close loops (in other words, the closer the loops, the better the quality of terry).  Terry is very absorbent, and the longer the loop, the greater the absorbency. When the pile is only on one side, it is called "Turkish toweling".

What is velour?

Velour towels are terry towls where the loops have been cropped to give a smoother texture and to make the design clearer.

What is jacquard?

In fabrics, jacquard is a design created by weaving differently colored threads together.

Joseph Jacquard invented this decorative weaving technique in 1804. A special loom is used to weave a pattern directly into the fabric.

A Jacquard loom makes it possible to control each warp thread so that each and every warp end can be raised or lowered at will to form an intricate design. Orginally controlled by a punched card system sometimes called the first computer, today the loom is fed by computer generated information that eliminates the cards, making design changes faster and more efficient.

Jacquard is characterized as a pattern woven into a fabric; either a surface effect, or a pattern produced with coloured yarns.

What is fiber reactive dye?

Fiber reactive dye is the most permanent of all dye types. Unlike other dyes, it actually forms a covalent bond with the cellulose or protein molecule. Once the bond is formed, what you have is one molecule, as the dye molecule has become an actual part of the cellulose fiber molecule. No wonder you can safely wash a towel that has been dyed in bright fiber reactive colors with white clothing, a hundred times, without endangering the whites in the least - even if it is all different bright colors, or even solid black!

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