It is demonstrated that two grating interferometers with high spatial resolutions can successfully be applied for the mechanical characterisation of the advanced fabric composite materials. Based on these two techniques, the mechanical properties of two kinds of fabric laminates are obtained without assumption of uniform strain fields to be used in the characterisation approaches using the local strain sensors. The degree of the yarn crimp effects of the two laminates is compared in terms of the out-of-plane displacement derivatives. Especially, it is shown that the grating shearing interferometer is appropriate for the crimped fabric structure requiring a three-dimensional analysis. The modification from moiré interferometer to grating shearing interferometer is performed by introducing a Michelson interferometer modified for image shearing.