Chenille fabric

According to textile historians, chenille-type yarn is a recent invention, dating to the 18th century and believed to have originated in France.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Dalton in Northwest Georgia became the tufted bedspread capital of the US thanks to Catherine Evans (later adding Whitener) who initially revived the handcraft technique in the 1890s.

[2] With effective marketing, chenille bedspreads appeared in city department stores and tufting subsequently became important to the economic development of North Georgia, maintaining families even through the Depression era.

[2] Merchants organised "spread houses" where products tufted on farms were finished using heat washing to shrink and "set" the fabric.

Trucks delivered pattern-stamped sheets and dyed chenille yarns to families for tufting before returning to pay the tufters and collect the spreads for finishing.

Giesse acquired Iteco company in 2010 integrating the chenille yarn electronic quality control directly on their machine.

As a yarn, it is a soft, feathery synthetic that when stitched onto a backing fabric, gives a velvety appearance, also known as imitation or "faux chenille".

Layers of soft cotton are batted together in patches or blocks and sewn with wide, raw edges to the front.

If hand or machine-washed, they should be machine-dried using low heat, or as a heavy textile, dried flat to avoid stretching, never hung.