Knitted Bag Colourway Planning: A Seven-Step Check for Shade, Dye Lot and Fastness

How Many Colourways Should One Drop Carry?

Four, and five is where the arithmetic starts working against the programme. Every colourway is a separate style for ordering purposes, so four shades at 100 pcs each is 400 pieces and five is 500. The cost of a fifth shade is not incremental: it is another dye lot, another lab dip round and another inspection lot.

The composition matters as much as the count. A working drop is two core neutrals, one seasonal accent and one dark, because those four roles cover the shelf without competing. A drop of four similar mid-tones splits demand and leaves the buyer with four slow movers rather than two fast and two slow.

Colourway Checklist: Seven Steps in Order

Run these seven in sequence, because each one gates the next. Skipping to lab dips before the roles are decided is how a drop ends up with three shades that all do the same job and one that nobody ordered.

1. Fix the count at four and assign roles: two neutrals, one seasonal accent, one dark.
2. Fix the reference for each shade as a Pantone TCX code plus a physical swatch, because a screen reference is not a specification.
3. Choose the dye route: dope-dyed yarn for fastness-critical shades, piece-dyed for short runs and unusual tones.
4. Approve lab dips under two light sources, D65 and TL84, and reject anything with visible metamerism.
5. Set the tolerance at Delta E 1.2 against the approved reference, measured on the finished knitted body rather than on yarn.
6. Reserve one dye lot per colourway at yarn procurement, sized to the whole order plus 3 percent for reknits.
7. Confirm fastness to ISO 105, AATCC 61 and AATCC 8 at grade 4 minimum, and write the grade into the inspection plan.

Step six is the one that prevents most colour disasters. A lot reserved at yarn procurement covers the whole order including any reknits, while a lot allocated at knitting runs out partway through and forces a second lot into the same colourway, which is exactly how a single shade ends up as two shades in one carton.

How Is a Shade Matched and Toleranced?

Against a physical approved reference, measured on a spectrophotometer and expressed as Delta E in CIE Lab space, with a tolerance of 1.2 for production. Below 1.0 the eye cannot separate two bodies side by side on a shelf; above about 2.0 most retail buyers can, and the difference becomes a commercial problem rather than a technical one.

Colourways per drop

Four: two neutrals, one seasonal accent, one dark

Order arithmetic

100 pcs per style and colourway, so 400 pieces for a four-shade drop

Shade reference

Pantone TCX code plus a physical approved swatch

Tolerance

Delta E 1.2 against the approved reference, measured on the knitted body

Light sources

D65 and TL84, both required, to expose metamerism

Dye lot rule

One reserved lot per colourway, sized to the order plus 3 percent for reknits

Fastness targets

ISO 105, AATCC 61 wash and AATCC 8 crocking at grade 4 minimum

Dope-dyed fastness

Grade 4 to 5 wash and light, against grade 4 for piece-dyed

Gauge effect

E7 reads about 4 percent darker than E12 in the same yarn

Lab dip timing

Approved before the 7 working day sampling clock starts

Bulk timing

30 days from sample approval

Shipment

FOB Xiamen, CIF and DDP available

What Is a Dye Lot and Why Does It Govern Everything?

A dye lot is one batch of yarn dyed in one bath, and it is the largest single unit of colour consistency available to a knit programme. Everything made from one lot matches; anything made from two lots risks a visible step. That is why the lot is reserved at procurement rather than allocated at knitting.

The practical sizing rule is the full order quantity plus 3 percent. The 3 percent covers reknits for defects, which on a knit programme run at 2 to 4 percent of pieces. Ordering exactly the order quantity leaves no margin, and the reknits then come from a second lot with a slightly different shade.

The lot also sets the boundary for what can be mixed in one carton. Pieces from two lots should never be packed together, even where both sit inside the Delta E 1.2 tolerance against the reference, because the difference between them can exceed the tolerance between them. Declaring lots separately at packing is the procedural control that keeps one shade inside one carton.

Which Colour Fastness Tests Apply to a Knit Bag?

Three, and grade 4 is the working minimum on each: colour fastness to ISO 105, wash fastness to AATCC 61, and crocking to AATCC 8. A bag is handled, washed and rubbed against clothing, so all three apply in a way they do not for most textile products.

Crocking deserves particular attention on a dark shade. A deep navy or black bag rubbed against a light coat will transfer if it grades below 4, and that transfer is the single most common colour complaint on dark knit bags. Testing the dark shade in a drop before the neutrals is the efficient sequencing.

Dope-Dyed or Piece-Dyed: Which Yarn Route?

Dope-dyed, where pigment is added before the filament is extruded, gives wash and light fastness of grade 4 to 5 and is the right route for any shade that will see sun or repeated washing. Piece-dyed yarn grades around 4 and offers a far wider shade range with lower minimum commitment on unusual tones.

The trade-off is flexibility against fastness. A dope-dyed shade has to be committed in yarn quantity up front, which is why it suits core neutrals that re-order every season. A piece-dyed shade suits the seasonal accent, where the shade changes and the run is short. Most drops use both routes across their four shades.

How Does Colour Behave at Different Gauges?

The same yarn at E7 reads roughly 4 percent darker than at E12, because the larger loop catches more shadow between stitches. That matters whenever a range mixes gauges, which most do: a pouch at E12 and a tote at E7 in the same yarn will not look like the same colour on a shelf.

The correction is made at lab dip rather than at approval. Dipping both gauges and adjusting the finer one slightly lighter brings them into the same visual band, and it costs one extra dip round. Discovering the difference after bulk is knitted is not correctable without reknitting.

What Does a Colourway Add to Cost and Time?

Each additional colourway adds a lab dip round, a reserved dye lot and an inspection lot, and it adds nothing to knitting time. The cost is therefore concentrated in development rather than in production, which is why a fifth shade costs disproportionately more than the fourth and why four is the working number.

Lab dips sit before the sampling clock rather than inside it. The 7 working days start once shades are approved, so a drop with four unapproved shades has four potential delays ahead of sampling. Approving shades in parallel with the body tech pack is how a four-shade drop still samples in a week.

Which Colourway Mistakes Show Up at Retail?

Metamerism first, shade drift between sizes second, and transfer from a dark shade third. Metamerism is the one that surprises people: two pieces that match under store lighting and clearly do not under daylight, which is why both D65 and TL84 are in the checklist above.

Shade drift between sizes comes from knitting a small and a large piece from the same nominal lot on different days, with the yarn relaxing differently. It is prevented by knitting all sizes of one colourway in one scheduling block, which is a line-planning request rather than a technical specification.

The fourth mistake is mismatch between a bag and its own hangtag or retail band, where the print is matched to a Pantone code and the knit is matched to a dipped reference. The two rarely agree to within Delta E 1.2, and the visible seam between bag and tag is read by customers as carelessness rather than as a printing issue. Matching print to the knitted body, not to the code, is the fix.

How Does Colour Interact With Jacquard Branding?

A jacquard mark knitted in a contrast yarn reads differently from the same mark printed, because the mark is made of loops rather than of ink. At E7 a two-colour jacquard mark needs a minimum of 6 stitches in any direction to resolve, which sets a practical minimum mark size of about 120 mm wide on a tote panel.

The contrast yarn in a jacquard also has to be shade-matched to the body in the same way a binding does, within Delta E 1.2, and it has to be tested to ISO 105 for transfer. A mark that bleeds into the body after washing is a branding failure that no amount of artwork correction will recover.

What Happens When a Colourway Re-Orders Next Season?

The reserved dye lot is the reason a re-order matches. Where a shade is expected to run across seasons, the lot is sized for more than one order and a physical reference is retained, so the next run is matched to the original body rather than to a fresh Pantone interpretation.

Where a lot has been exhausted, the re-order starts from the retained physical reference and a new lab dip round, with the tolerance still at Delta E 1.2 against that reference. Matching to a retained body is materially more reliable than matching to a code, because the code has never been knitted.

This is the argument for dope-dyed core neutrals. A dope-dyed shade is reproducible from a formula and a retained reference, while a piece-dyed shade depends on a bath that has to be recreated. Programmes that re-order the same neutral every season should hold it on the dope-dyed route for exactly this reason.

How to Write Colour Into the Tech Pack

State the Pantone TCX reference, the physical swatch reference, the dye route, the Delta E tolerance, the two light sources, the fastness grades required and the lot rule. Seven fields per colourway, and no field left to interpretation. A pack that gives only a Pantone code has specified a starting point, not a colour.

Then state how the shades are inspected. Each colourway is inspected as its own lot to AQL 2.5 under ISO 2859-1, with shade checked against the approved reference on a measured sample from that lot rather than visually across a table. That single procedural line prevents the argument that has no technical resolution. Full colour planning sits alongside the material advice on the knit bag materials pillar, and the seasonal side is covered in the knitted bag collection groupings.

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