Frequently Asked Questions:
Are your fabrics certified organic?
Are your inks and dyes "natural"?
Is Harmony your real name?
Can I purchase just one yard?
Where can I find your wholesale prices?
Do you send swatches?
How can I get yardage for sampling?
Do I need permission to make products out of your fabrics?
How do I get listed on your products or services pages?
How do I order wholesale yardage?
How quickly do wholesale rolls ship?
Will these fabrics be available next season?
Do the fabrics shrink?
Will the fabrics fade?
How do you recommend washing?
Do you ship overseas?
Do you offer exclusive designs?
What about Bamboo?
What about Hemp?
How come some of your fabrics are imported from India?
Are your fabrics certified organic?
Yes, all of the base fabrics are grown and certified organic. The
certifiers vary by location. US fabrics are certified by the Texas
Department of Agriculture to the USDA Organic standards and our organic
fabrics from India are certified organic by SKAL (now going by Control
Union outside of The Netherlands). We are in the processes of transitioning our wide-width fabrics to a fully 3rd party certified printer. We hope to have all of our fabrics be certified to the GOTS
(Global Organic Textile Standards) in 2008. At the moment
all of our printing conforms to the OTA fiber processing standards and GOTS. To
read more about the difference please
click here.
Are your inks and dyes "natural"?
Our dyes and pigments are synthetic. They have been screened to prevent
hazardous inputs from being used. All input must meet stringent
toxicity screening and biodegradability/eliminability standards as
well. Water based dyes and pigments are used. To read more about the
differences
click here.
You can also read more of the chemistry details
at the GOTS web site.
Is Harmony your real name?
Yes. You can thank/blame my parents for that one.
No, they are not and never have been "hippies".
Can I purchase just one yard?
Absolutely. We have fabulous online
retail distributors
that can help
you. They set their prices independently so please contact them
directly for ordering information.
Where can I find your wholesale prices?
Out of respect for our retail distributors we do not post our wholesale
prices. If you are serious about ordering wholesale, please complete our
wholesale account application
and fax it to us. Once we receive your completed and signed application, we will send you our wholesale price list. If you are located in Europe please email info@martje.net. If you are based in Canada please email info@kiso.ca. If you are based in Australia please email life@organicfabriconline.com.au.
Do you send swatches?
Swatches of our fabrics may be purchased through our retail distributors.
How can I get yardage for sampling?
We only keep full rolls in stock and therefore can not ship individual
yardage. We highly recommend purchasing sample yardage from one of our awesome
retail distributors
to make sure the fabric will work for your
purposes before ordering wholesale rolls.
Do I need permission to make products out of your fabrics?
No. Our goal is to increase the availability of organic cotton.
How do I get listed on your products or services pages?
Any company that is using Harmony Art fabrics is eligible for listing.
Just
send us an email
and let us know. We do reserve the right to
remove any listing without warning....though to date we have not had to.
How do I order wholesale yardage?
For wholesale purchases within the US, you will need to complete our
wholesale account application
prior to placing an order. We only
accept MasterCard and Visa payment at this time. A retail sales number
is required for purchases in California.
How quickly do wholesale rolls ship?
Fabrics that are in stock typically are released 1-5 days from the time the order is placed.
Will these fabrics be available next season?
As long as a print in our "regular collection" is selling we plan to keep it in stock. We will be
re-printing designs as needed and adding new designs as often as we can.
In order for the solid colors to exactly match the prints we run them at
the same time which means we may temporarily be without inventory of a
solid while we are waiting for a print to be re-run.
We are doing our best to keep the fabrics in stock at all times but as demand is increasing, and production lead times are long, we do anticipate there will be times (months) when we are temporarily out of wholesale yardage. As we transition some of our prints to a new print facility there is a good chance that the color will shift slightly with the new run. Communicating your needs well in advance is the best way to ensure we have fabric in stock at the time you need it. We sincerely appreciate your patience during this transition.
Any fabric that we do not plan to re-run will be noted as "LIMITED RELEASE". From time to time we will be phasing out one colorway of a particular print and re-runing it in a new colorway, these fabrics will be noted as "LIMITED RELEASE COLORWAY". We do reserve the right to discontinue a fabric at any time. As soon as this decision has officially been made we will move it from the "regular collection" to the "limited release" section of our web site.
Do the fabrics shrink?
All fabrics will shrink some. They range from .1% to 10% max. shrinkage. Most fabrics shrink more in the length than the width. We HIGHLY recommend you test all the fabrics you plan to use before cutting and sewing for production to make sure they will work for your needs.
Will the fabrics fade?
All printed/dyed fabrics will fade (organic or conventional)...the darker the fabric the more noticeable this will be. We HIGHLY recommend you test all the fabrics you plan to use before cutting and sewing for production to make sure they will work for your needs.
How do you recommend washing?
We recommend that all of our fabrics be washed in cold water using an eco-friendly detergent. For environmental reasons we suggest hanging dry. The fabrics may also be dried in a regular dryer.
Do you ship overseas?
Yes. We happily ship to most countries. We are working with Buy Me 10 Flowers in Europe, Organic Fabric Online in Australia, and KISO Organics in Canada to make distribution to these countries easier for everyone.
Do you offer exclusive designs?
YES! We love to help you bring your own vision to life. We have a
library of existing designs you can choose from or we can design to your
specifications. Minimum exclusive orders are 1,000 yards. We also
offer custom designs where you pick the design and base fabric but the
minimum is only 500 yards. The remaining yardage is added to our stock
fabric collection. Please
email
or call for more details and to get
access to our design library of available prints.
What about Bamboo?
We love the feel of bamboo, however, due to the toxic processing to which bamboo
is subject in the transition from plant to fiber, we have decided to
hold off on that fiber for the time being. We hope that a
better/cleaner process is discovered soon. If you hear about one please
let us know.
We would love to be using it if there were....until then
we will be sticking to organic cotton.
If you want to read a great blog on the debate, check out Victoria Everman's post: "How Green is Bamboo Fabric". If you want an in depth analysis visit Lotus Organics' Blog titled "Bamboo: Facts Behind the Fiber". Another great article on the bamboo debate is, "How Green Are Bamboo Clothes?".
For those of you that are interested, here's an easy to understand explanation of the bamboo/fiber process as explained by eco-interior designer Kirsten Flynn: "...rayon and bamboo are very similar. Both are made by dissolving Cellulose, or plant fiber in a bunch of chemicals so it forms a material that can be extruded through spinarettes (think a long stream of very thin garlic coming out of a garlic press, or one of those old Play Doh squeezers that made the stuff that looked like Play Doh spaghetti.) The long fibers that have been formed in this way then are dipped in a bath to harden them, (in some processes this bath contains acetone) and then woven into threads that are in turn woven into fabric or cord. I still like bamboo fabric, it feels great, and bamboo is more rapidly renewable that trees, which is where conventional rayon gets it's cellulose. I just worry about the chemical useage, and whether the plants are careful to capture any chemical effluent to the air or water."
What about Hemp?
We believe in hemp and hope to someday add it to our line. In fact, we are in the initial stages of developing an 80/20 organic cotton/hemp blend. We hope to have it available in 2008. In the meantime,
since conventionally grown and manufactured cotton is the most widely used fiber and also the most
environmentally destructive, we made the decision to begin our journey
with cotton. Stay tuned... the journey is still young...
How come some of your fabrics are imported from India?
We would LOVE to source and manufacture all of our fabrics here in the USA. However, this is not possible at this point in time for several reasons. First of all, the organic long staple cotton needed for fine fabrics such as sateen are not grown in large enough quantities here in the USA. Most of the USA organic cotton is short staple or Upland cotton.
Our first run of wide-width fabrics were printed in South Carolina, unfortunately the quality control was not up to our standards and the pigment printing was not ideal either. We have yet to be able to find a domestic, fiber-reative, wide-width printer. Eventually we may get to the quantities necessary for the few that do exist still in the USA but for now our only viable option for wide-width printing is overseas. We have had 60" sateen specially woven for us so that we can print these domestically.
Textiles are an international business. It might surprise you to find out that "Made in the USA" organic (or non) cotton may (and sometimes does) contain cotton fiber that comes from overseas. Although technically the where woven determines the "where made", we plan to always disclose where our fiber is grown. If you really want to know where your cotton comes from, be sure to ask.
India cotton farmers are committing suicide at alarming rates, one every 8 hours. When I learned this, I was moved to create an environmental art piece titled 2,300. The farmers are forces into constant debt by chemical and seed companies. Organic agriculture offers hope. We feel good that the international business/production that we are involved in supports positive change for the people it impacts directly and indirectly. 54% of all pesticides sprayed in India is put on cotton! We believe this is not a sustainable system and our organic cotton orders helps push the balance in a new direction.
The fact that our cotton and processing is 3rd party certified by the well known and respected Control Union makes the decision to import from India one we can feel good about. GOTS certification by Control Union also addresses fair trade issues so that we can rest assured that the people and the planet are being treated with respect.
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