| Hand | "The way the fabric feels when it is touched. Terms like softness, crispness, dryness, silkiness are all terms that describe the hand of the fabric." |
| Habotai | "A lightweight silk fabric commonly used for linings, hangings and underwear." |
| Harris tweed | A woollen tweed fabric woven on handlooms by crofters in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. Harris tweed is traditionally woven 75 cm wide but modern handlooms can produce 150 cm width fabric. |
| HDPE | High density polyethylene. |
| Hemp | "A light-coloured, strong bast fibre obtained from the hemp plant Cannabis sativa." |
| HEPA | High efficiency particulate air (filtration). |
| Herringbone | A broken twill weave giving a zigzag or herringbone effect. |
| Heterofilament | A filament made up of more than one polymer. |
| Heather | "A yarn that is spun using pre-dyed fibers. These fibers are blended together to give a particular look. (For example, black and white may be blended together to create a grey heathered yarn.) The term, heather, may also be used to describe the fabric mad |
| HMPE | High modulus polyethylene. |
| Hollow spindle system | A system of yarn formation in which sliver or roving is drafted and the drafted twistless strand is wrapped with a yarn as it passes through a rotating hollow spindle. The binder or wrapping yarn is mounted on the hollow spindle and is unwound and wrapped |
| Honeycomb | "A fabric structure in which the warp and weft threads form ridges and hollows, so as to give a cellular appearance." |
| Hopsack | A modification of a plain weave in which two or more ends or picks weave as one. |
| Horizontal lapping | "A process in which layers of web are laid horizontally, one on top of another, to form a multilayer structure (see also vertical lapping)." |
| Houndstooth Check | "A variation on the twill weave construction in which a broken check effect is produced by a variation in the pattern of interlacing yarns, utilizing at least two different colored yarns." |
| HPPE | High performance polyethylene. |
| HT | High tenacity. |
| Huckaback | "A weave used principally for towels and glass-cloths in which a rough surface effect is created on a plain ground texture by weaving short floats, whereby warp floats are on one side of the fabric and weft floats are on the other." |
| HVAC | "Heating, ventilation and air conditioning." |
| Hydroentanglement | A process for bonding a nonwoven fabric by using high pressure water jets to intermingle the fibres. see spunlacing. |
| Hydrophilic | A term used to describe a substance which tends to mix with or to be wetted by water. |
| Hydrophilicity | The extent to which a substance is hydrophilic. |
| Hydrophilic Fibers | "Fibers that absorb water easily, take longer to dry, and require more ironing." |
| Hydrophobic | A term used to describe a substance which tends to repel or not to be wetted by water. |