A Brief History of Plush Toy Fabric

2-Way Stretch Soft Velboa & 4-Way Stretch Soft Velboa

Around the year 2013, toy factories started to use 2-Way Stretch Soft Velboa as the main plush toy fabric. The advantage of 2-Way Stretch Soft Velboa is simple and obvious: The surface looks delicate and the hand feel is soft. Besides, the short fleece pile does not fall off easily. Then in the year 2014, 4-Way Stretch Soft Velboa started to come to the market. It contains 6% spandex. Originally it is developed to be used as legging fabric material. The 4-Way Stretch Soft Velboa is ultra soft, even softer than 2-Way Stretch Velboa. 

When 4-Way Stretch Soft Velboa is used on plush toys, the hand feel is so soft. It's because the spandex inside the fabric stretch or shrink with the hand touching it. So during that period, 4-Way Stretch Soft Velboa was THE most widely used fabric on plush toys. Manufacturers and designers keep using the fabric material although the colors may change in different parts of the toy. For example, the ear of the bear may be ivory, and the body of the bear may be dark brown. Even today, 4-Way Stretch Soft Velboa is still widely used on soft toys as the main fabric or as the matching fabric.

PV Plush

Different from the Soft Velboa, PV Plush has longer piles (usually 6mm-20mm). Some designers want their toy creations to have longer piles to exhibit special character personalities. In the soft creature below, the designer used PV Plush to express the character's silly and crazy personality.

However, PV Plush mainly has two disadvantages. First, its hand feel is not very smooth. Second, the common plain dyed PV Plush has obvious horizontal bars. If you take a closer look at the soft character on the left, you can easily see it. So now if designers use PV Plush, they normally use brushed PV Plush, such as that brushed into flower shapes.

Faux Rabbit Fur

Faux Rabbit Fur is an updated and improved version of PV Plush. They have the same yarn materials and knitting structure, but Faux Rabbit Fur is softer and more delicate. Now Faux Rabbit Fur is the most widely used fabric on stuffed animal toys. However, it has one key disadvantage the pile can fall easily if you try to pull the hair out.

Thus, now in the market, there are two kinds of improved Faux Rabbit Fur. First, people changed the original knitting machines into Karl Mayer KS knitting machines. These machines are normally 28 gauge or 32 gauge, so they knit together the surface hair much better. Second, people changed the original knitting machines a little bit. They add one more yarn to the knitting base, thus also knitting together the surface hair much better.

If we compare the two ways, the first one has the better effect but it's more expensive because making it on KS knitting machines means the piles are brushed out and sheared flat. The second one is cheaper but the surface pile is not as full if we keep the GSM unchanged.

Teddy Fleece

Teddy Fleece has a curly pile like the dog Teddy. It's usually used as the matching fabric. Its unique curly look makes it irreplaceable in some cases.

Faux Mink Fur

Faux Mink Fur is the next big thing for plush toys. Its feature is a high-low pile knitting together. It imitates real animal fur which in many cases has a high pile and low pile at the same time, creating a sense of layering. 

Faux Mink Fur was originally developed for artificial fur jackets for women. Gradually, we started to reduce the weight of it to about 300GSM and use it on plush toys. Similarly, we can do embossing, brushing, tie-dyeing, and so on on the Mink Fur fabric.

We think Faux Mink Fur has great potential to be used as toy fabric mainly for two reasons. First, it is knitted by Karl Mayer KS knitting machines, thus the surface pile does not fall easily even though we try to pull it. Second, it imitates the real animal fur better. 

Faux Fox Fur

Faux Fox Fur is also widely used now, especially as characters' hair. It contains acrylic, so the hand feel is more coarse and more like hair. It has a long pile, so the hair can even be tied up like real hair.     

Faux Fox Fur is getting really popular now on plush toys. It is mainly used as the hair of the characters. For example, in the Jellycat character on the left, the designer is using pink Faux Fur Fox fabric to give the creature a mad character. In the Jellycat lion character on the right, the designer is using Faux Fox Fox in golden brown color and with a shorter pile to imitate real lion hair better.

Summary 

We observe that one trend in plush toy fabric is very obvious. Designers are increasingly using different fabrics, such as fabrics of different textures, different pile lengths, different colors, different content, and different brushing/embossing designs on one single creation. Thus, it is important for designers or plush toy factories to find one factory that can supply all these kinds of fabrics. We are a one-stop supplier for all these fabrics! Welcome to contact us!