Knits-Wovens - How to tame the stretch

Remember my previous blog on flower buttons? I promised to blog further on how this manufacturer worked with combining knits and wovens. Combining knits and wovens opens up wonderful design opportunities, that is until you try to sew the two together. The knits invariably stretch out of shape and the wovens will stubbornly refuse to stretch.

The most frustrating thing is trying to gather a skirt (with a high gather ratio) to a knit bodice. Imagine a pretty gathered taffeta skirt sewn to a stretch velvet top. While I am not going to explain every tip and trick out there, this well-loved jacket has some excellent examples of how to do this.

The most important thing to remember when combining the two is that knits will have to be stabilized in some way. This jacket has a facing which has been interfaced with a light-weight interfacing appropriate for a stretch fabric. In other words, after the interfacing is applied, the knit fabric retains some of its knit characteristics - it doesn't feel stiff as a board. The interfacing prevents the buttonholes from stretching out and the topstitching is straight and even.

As a design inspiration, you can see how the facing is an entirely different fabric. The neckline and center front seams would have been too bulky if faced with the french terry knit. Instead, they used a flower print jersey. I am sure this jacket was part of a two piece set that had a matching pair of flower print pants.

The gathered eyelet trim was pre-gathered onto a twill tape and then applied to the hem. The manufacturer could have applied a twill tape to the jacket and then gathered the trim directly to the hem. In either case, the knit fabric has to be stabilized to prevent stretching. The jacket, sleeve and pocket hems all have this gathered eyelet trim. Wow!

The manufacturer gets bonus points for their patch pocket application. The rounded pocket would have been very difficult to maintain the round shape and topstitch it without stretching. They used a 1/2" strip of interfacing around the edge of the pocket. This picture is a close-up of the inside of the pocket.

The final tip is not easily observable. In a factory, the sewing machines can be adjusted to help prevent stretching. How the fabric is fed through the machine is part of the reason store-bought knits look so good. This adjustment is often called the differential and it refers to the movement of the feed dogs. Industrial machines with differential feed have two sets of feed dogs. These feed dogs can be adjusted in how far they move back and forth and up and down, in relation to each other. The front feed dogs can either pull extra fabric or pull less in relation to the back feed. This is not to be confused with the stitch length, also controlled by the feed dogs. Few home machines, with the exception of some overlock sergers, have this ability, requiring knits to be stabilized even more when sewn. A walking-foot attachment, or machine, may help with seam distortion too. American and Efird has some good suggestions on sewing knits.

Country of origin labeling for clothing

I couldn't resist writing a blog about this particular care/content tag found in a t-shirt that was a Christmas present. This is perhaps one of the worst labels I have seen in a long time. In fact, I believe it was purposely written to make it look like it was made in the USA.

The maker of this shirt did a few things right. The tag clearly states the content of 100% Cotton and it was placed at the back of the neck. Unfortunately, this is the only thing they did right.

The first obvious problem is the different font sizes. Notice how the words Dominican Republic are smaller than anything else. You might think they made those words smaller so they could fit on one line of the tag. But the placement of all the words could make a consumer believe the shirt was actually made in the USA. I did when I first looked at it. Further, the addition of the phrase "of USA Fabric" is extraneous. It should simply state, "Made in Dominican Republic" period.

This tag would not be acceptable by FTC guidelines. When writing a tag, all of the words on the tag should be of a uniform, legible font size. The tag would be rejected for more than the font size issue. This particular shirt is missing a care tag and manufacturer identification. The content tag does not need to include the manufacturers name or RN number. That information should be included on the care tag and/or other packaging. It would be impossible to track down who manufactured this shirt. The FTC could go after the retailer, in this case.

This kind of thing should have been caught when the items were brought into the US. I am, however, not surprised to see it was missed.

Grading Rulers

Kathleen Fasanella posted a blog back in Feb 2006 about grading rulers. Imagine my surprise when I opened a book I picked up at a thrift store. Inside the front cover was a little used hinged grading ruler in it's original packaging with instructions! The ruler was stashed in an older edition of the Price/Zamkoff grading book. The book was priced at a measly $2 - the original price sticker for the ruler was still on the packaging of $5.35. Funny thing is, I bought the book about 3 years ago and stuck it on a shelf. I only opened it up a few days ago as I was working on my new infant grading charts. I wanted the book as a grading reference, but rarely use it because of how poorly it explains grading. What a great bonus to find the ruler!

About 98% of the grading I do is in a CAD program. Grading on the computer is so easy! Select a point and tell the computer how much growth should occur in the X,Y directions. It redraws the curves automatically. It is easy to double check the grade in the larger sizes by laying the pieces on top of each other or walking the pieces along side.

Every CAD program varies in ease of use. I have done computerized grading using Gerber's Accumark, Autocad/Betacad and Optitex. I will blog in the future about the differences between the three. Suffice it to say, Optitex is the easiest to use thus far, and quickly becoming my favorite. Grading by hand, is another story. It is tedious and takes a lot of time. I can see why grading is considered an art form. I am grading my personal patterns by hand and it is a big learning process.

In design school, I learned to grade with only a ruler. My 18" clear ruler with 1/16" increments, is photographed above. Grading with only a simple ruler is fairly straightforward. You measure out the changes and re-draw your pattern for each size step. Using a grading ruler makes the process so much simpler! I graded my infant flat block patterns with the grading ruler in a couple of hours (I was re-working some of my grades at the same time). The ruler is marked in 1/16" increments. Your grade rules need to be in 1/16", 1/8", 1/4", 1/2" increments to use this ruler effectively, which means you may need to re-work some of your basic pattern measurements to make grading easier.

I hope to demonstrate the process of actual grading, but for now I am enjoy playing with my lucky find!