Techniques
Making a garment
The key to our success is retaining the original traditional quality of a hand-crafted garment. There are multiple procedures involved in the manufacturing process, and most are carried out by hand. Harley of Scotland's reputation of manufacturing the highest quality knitwear in the world is earned by conducting quality checks at each stage in the production cycle.
Knitting
We are one of the few private knitwear manufacturers to offer as our main technique, traditional fully fashioned and seam-free knitwear. Using the revolutionary ‘seamless’ production technique, which we now have 17 years of experience in, each garment is knitted in a single unit. This has the hugely desirable outcome of eliminating the need for joining of components, producing a sleeker, and often better fitting garment. It also eliminates all wool waste. A fully fashioned garment is made up of several individual panels. Each individually knitted panel is checked by hand to ensure that it meets with our standards.
Milling
The yarn in our knits is still oily at this stage and milling them in North East Scotland’s extremely soft water is essential to achieving the uniquely luxurious ‘handle’ of a Harley of Scotland garment.
Clean make-up
The washed garment passes through the Clean make-up area where a number of highly skilled processes are carried out. Perfecting the time-honored skills in garment make-up can take up to 18 months. Among these is the ‘Mathbirk’ process, which is a combined linking and over locking method to bind fully fashioned garment panels together, resulting in a strong tensile seamed garment.
French -pressing and finishing
Each garment is French-pressed with the greatest of care, ironed, labelled, checked and packed ready for delivery to our customers. It is absolutely vital to us that these completed garments are perfect, and this is achieved only by employing an experienced, competent and dedicated workforce.