Heart of Huddersfield 2026
This is the final blog instalment for our flagship, Heart of Huddersfield collection, before its launch on Thursday 10th September.
Today we introduce you to each of these seventeen pure wool fabrics exclusive to Fabworks. Only you, as a Fabworks Bulletin subscriber, have this advanced information, allowing 48 hours to view, compare and prioritise your favourites among these very limited run fabrics before they go live for purchase at 3pm on 10th September. We will also share an insight into our design ethos and process, which underscores HoH.
This year’s Heart of Huddersfield collection is a refined ensemble of fabrics, all sourced from surplus yarns in a selection of rich and vibrant colours, selected specially by us. Repurposing surplus yarns does limit the length that each ‘run’ can be, or that each roll of fabric measures. It also means that these are completely bespoke, and impossible to recreate. The collection has been woven by local mills located less than 10 miles from Fabworks’ premises. This is Heart of Huddersfield.
Behind every fabric in the Heart of Huddersfield 2026 - Speckled Chestnut Herringbone collection, is a story of attention to detail, care and craftsmanship. Each step of the production process is meticulously managed to ensure that these fabrics meet the highest standards, by selecting the best quality yarns and presiding over all the small details before it goes to manufacture. The character of a woollen cloth is shaped by decisions measured in the smallest of details. The precise spacing of the warp, the number of weft picks, the balance of yarn thickness and twist, and the tension on the loom, all contribute to the way a finished fabric will feel, drape and perform. We work closely with the mills to maintain strict quality control and guarantee that each piece is worthy of carrying the Heart of Huddersfield name.
With a dislike of fast fashion and big emphasis on sustainability, we are equally proud of our commitment to making a cloth that is ecologically sound. As is widely known, almost all Fabworks stock is sourced as deadstock, left over from fabric manufacturing and garment production. As with previous years’ collections, we have used the same approach to create Heart of Huddersfield 2026; buying surplus yarn to reduce textile waste and incorporate sustainable practices. We omit the yarn spinning process in favour of sourcing deadstock yarns. This allows us to create a high quality product worthy of a place on the world stage, just in very limited supply.
To design the collection, we start with what we think you, the customer, want to see most. There has been a recent trend for (and scarcity of) what is traditionally known as Donegal Tweed - as the name suggest the design is originally from Ireland, and consists of neps, flecks and speckles dotted throughout the fabric’s design, which give additional layers of detail and add a liveliness without creating huge contrast. The result is more subtle colour palettes that are still rich. For 2026 we did this by honing in on the speckled element and then sourced a range of fleck-filled yarns - note that these speckled yarns did not all come from the same manufacturer or spinning mills - we took our time to gather them from different sources, comparing the weight, thickness, quality, etc, to pick the best colours, qualities and skeins (weight of the yarn) to ensure consistency for this range of finished fabrics. The warp itself is a chestnut brown, adding richness and depth throughout the whole collection (note that this is different to a standard mid-grey warp seen in most deadstock tweeds. Chestnut brown is an uncommon colour, and sits well across the collection).
Think of a wool fabric finished length as a complex arrangement of textile lines that intersect sitting in a very specific order, both on the warp and weft, which create the designs and patterns. Like a synchronised dance, where each individual dancer (the yarn) must be coordinated and move to the rhythm - if not, the whole composition becomes a tangled mess. The order of the intertwining is the weave. The two sets of yarns sit at right angles to each other. The warp (for HoH 2026, Chestnut Brown) runs down the length of the fabric, parallel to the selvedges. The wefts (specially selected colours) run across the fabric, selvedge to selvedge.
The result of this year’s manufacturing is an ensemble of 17 beautiful tweeds, or Yorkshire-inspired Donegal Tweeds if you so like, in a herringbone weave. The collection features 9 neutrals that exude understated chic, alongside 8 brilliant eye-catching colours, together forming Heart of Huddersfield 2026: Speckled Chestnut Herringbone (SCH).
Giving you the information you need ahead of the collection launch. Here are the colour details of each of The Speckled Chestnut Herringbones, featuring a close-up angled product photograph & colour overview.
Saltaire Silver Heather
Soft lilac and white carry the tones of striated summer skies over the heather, lifted by a silvery shimmer. Blue, white and pink neps like scudding clouds and the pink and lilac of a hillside sunset.
66.5m available online
Lumb Falls Flurry
A dark navy and grey-blue melange, the colour of a northern night sky before the first snow. White and pale-blue neps float across it like ice crystals and the first flurry in the dark water below the falls.
57m available online
Cragg Vale Peat
An earthy, peaty, leaf-mulch brown, the colour of the high valley moors as the year draws in. Subtle soft beige and cream flecks settle into it, like seeds scattered on the rich earth at dusk, a quiet return to the soil.
28.5m available online
Norland Sunset
A soft flesh-pink and beige ground, warmed with fading glory of an evening sky. Flecks of rich pink, burnt orange and mustard gold recall golden sunsets over the moor edge where the bracken turns rich gold in autumn.
56.5m available online
Greetland Green Woods
A glaucous blue-green weft, like walking through the mossy woods. Neps of coin copper, gold, russet orange and emerald green glint underfoot like birch coins and cherry leaves over velvety moss and lichen.
21m available online
Barkisland Hall
A grey-silver melange with hints of brown, the tone of old stone and birch bark. Its multicoloured neps carry a sense of history, the rich fabric of a grand country house standing since 1638.
80m available online
Almondbury Evening
A dark, dramatic jet black ground scattered with rainbow neps of yellow, orange, blue, green and black, catching the last colour of the day, the way lit-windows shine across the hillside at dusk.
44m available online
Nont Sarah's
Soft, warm, muted bracken hues, tinged with undertones of pink like the sweeping vistas over Buckstones Edge at sunset. Neps of natural white, dark brown and warm beige keep it beautifully neutral.
21.5m available online
Crosland Hill Fireworks
A blazing orange, fiery as red maple and as bright as embers catching in a grate. A clean, saturated orange with proper heat. When set against a Yorkshire-stone grey it really burns even brighter.
61.5m available online
Corn Mill Magic
A mesmerising royal blue, lapis and sapphire, giving the depth of a deep lake, with paler watery tones throughout. Flecks of gold, green, deep pink, turquoise and orange add a certain magic, a nod to the water that is at the core of Yorkshire’s textile manufacture.
52.5m available online
Slaithwaite Stone
A blue-grey melange the colour of a rugged dry stone wall, with a silvered sheen across the surface like light off wet gritstone. Black and white neps catch like tufts of sheep’s fleece clinging to the walls and fences, fluttering in the hillside wind.
35.5m available online
Honley Harvest
Deep honeyed amber runs through the weft like late-harvest light, grounded by the collection’s chestnut warp. Neps of sunshine gold and burning fire orange give it a warm, spicy indulgence, all sticky ginger, brandy snaps and golden syrup.
42.5m available online
Marsden Cuckoo
A soft grey-beige weft against the rich chestnut warp, striated like twilight mist over the moor. Subtle neps of navy and pink give it the barred, feathered look of a cuckoo in flight at dusk.
38.5m availalbe online
Meltham Meadow
Sheep-fleece cream, sprinkled with nature’s joyful colours. Neps of buttercup yellow, grass green, fire-orange marigold, pink clover and turquoise scatter across it like meadow wildflowers in a new-shorn fleece.
48m available online
Deer Hill Flora
A natural white ground scattered with watery neps of blue-green, orange and gold, more muted than its cream sibling, bringing to mind the flora & fauna of the heathland, and the iridescent wing-shields of beetles.
57m available online
Brockholes Rowan
Ablaze with autumn warmth, spicy russet brown weft so warm that the chestnut warp recurrent throughout the whole collection all but melts into it. Neps of gold glow through it like rowan, hawthorn berry and hazelnut.
20.5m available online
Wessenden Foxglove
Rich ruby and foxglove pink turn up the heat, a riotous display of purple-pink spikes in full blooms, with subtle flecks of orange, pale pink and blue sit at the centre like pollen on the flower.
21m available online
Here are the places that have inspired our Speckled Herringbone Collection. As Yorkshire folk we appreciate our natural environment and draw from it, because it has moulded us over centuries and made us what we are and influenced what we produce, from the water in the becks to the dramatic moorland landscapes and even the efforts of Titus Salt to create a place where workers’ working and living conditions far exceeded the norm for the time.
1) Saltaire Silver Heather: Saltaire is Titus Salt’s model mill village on the Aire, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
2) Lumb Falls Flurry: Lumb Falls is a waterfall and packhorse bridge in Crimsworth Dean above Hebden Bridge.
3) Cragg Vale Peat: Cragg Vale is one of the highest inhabited valleys in England, cut into peat moor above Mytholmroyd.
4) Norland Sunset: Norland Moor is the high moor-edge above the Ryburn, where the bracken turns gold in autumn.
5) Greetland Green Woods: Greetland is a hillside village between Halifax and the Pennine edge.
6) Barkisland Hall: Barkisland Hall is a Yorkshire manor house of 1638, above the Ryburn valley.
7) Almondbury Evening: Almondbury is the hill village above Huddersfield, beneath Castle Hill and Victoria Tower.
8) Nont Sarah's: Nont Sarah’s is the moor-top inn on the Buckstones road above Scammonden. Nont is Yorkshire dialect for aunt.
9) Crosland Hill Fireworks: The quarry plateau above Huddersfield, and the old firework works that stood nearby.
10) Corn Mill Magic: The corn mills and mill ponds of the Colne and Holme, and the soft Pennine water that made Huddersfield’s name in cloth.
11) Slaithwaite Stone: Slaithwaite is a Colne Valley mill town on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, home of the Moonrakers.
12) Honley Harvest: Honley sits at the foot of the Holme Valley, recorded in the Domesday Book and a centre of hand-weaving long before the mills arrived.
13) Marsden Cuckoo: Marsden is the Colne Valley village of the cuckoo legend, still marked by Cuckoo Day each spring.
14) Meltham Meadow: Meltham lies beneath Wessenden Head Moor and is home to the last working mill in the village.
15) Deer Hill Flora: Deer Hill is the reservoir and moor above Marsden, heather, bilberry and cotton grass.
16) Brockholes Rowan: Brockholes is the Holme Valley village where the Holme meets the New Mill Dike.
17) Wessenden Foxglove: Wessenden is the reservoir valley climbing south out of Marsden onto the Pennine watershed.
- All fabrics in this collection have a width of 148cm
- All fabrics in this collection have a medium weight, GSM 325
- All fabrics will be available for purchase from 15:00 Thursday 10th September, in-store and online
- Neps: A nep, also known as a fleck or speckle, is a colour-contrasting fibre to create a speckled, multicoloured textures. Specialty yarn producers add neps for rustic character, visual depth, and a lightly textured finish to for unique wool tweed fabrics.