We’re often asked about the fine pleat that runs through the centre of our fitted sheets, so we would like to take a second to explain how it arises. It is not a flaw, but a characteristic sign of quality, which gradually disappears when you begin using and washing the sheet. Here we explain how it comes about and why it’s a sign of superior quality.
The textile finishing of our fabrics is a highly complex process, because we want to retain their special softness, their uniform, close-meshed surface and elasticity despite washing, bleaching, dyeing, drying, etc.
Our fabrics undergo a specially developed textile finishing process in which the tubular fabric is gently finished before being cut.
In other words, we knit our fabrics on large circular knitting machines that produce an extremely long tube of fabric. The fabric is then spread out flat and rolled into large bales. When you flatten a round tube of fabric, two folded edges are created on the left and right – and one of these folds becomes the line that eventually runs through the centre of the finished sheet.
Our fabrics are then finished, in other words dyed, equipped with aloe vera and so on, while still in tubular form.
It is not until the next production stage, the making-up or sewing of the fitted sheet, that the fabric is unrolled from the bale and cut open along one edge. This removes one of the two pleat marks.
Imagine the following: Take a cardboard roll, flatten it, cut the flattened roll down one folded edge and open it out on the table. You now have a rectangle before you with a long crease running through the middle.
This is precisely how the centrefold or pleat mark comes about in our fitted sheets. But don’t worry, unlike the cardboard roll, the pleat mark in our sheets gradually disappears when you wash and use them.