Designing seamless handloom garments

Seamless clothing plays an important role with its advance technology that quickens the production process and gives comfort for the wearer without a seam. Dr S Kauvery Bai and Pallavi BS elaborate on how to design and develop seamless handloom garments using double cloth tubular weaving technique.

The Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) hosted the Government Officials of Haryana along with apparel industry experts to discuss the scope of investment in apparel industry as the industry is gearing up for more investment. The discussion was held with respect to ‘Happening Haryana: Global Investors Summit”, which will be held on March 7-8 in Gurgaon where apparel sector is one of the focus areas for investment in Haryana. “Clothes make the man”. Clothing is a very important factor in the development of an individual’s personality, be it a normal or a special group. Thus clothing needs to be designed and constructed in accordance to the special needs of an individual. L.M. Australasia (1988) described that seamless technology can directly produce finished garments without cut and sewn. The seamless clothing plays an important role with its advance technology that quickens the production process and gives comfort for the wearer without a seam. Tubular weaving is referred as a method of weaving a large-diameter seamless cylindrical fabric without piecing together a plurality of unit webs. Seamless involves the production of a whole garment in one piece on a loom such that little or no sewing-up is required. But it does not mean that complete elimination of seams. It is normally free from side seams. A seamless garment does not have or appear to have a seam. This will avoid any stitching, inter-locking or joining of pieces of cloths.

Aim of the study is to design and develop hand loom seamless garments using double cloth tubular weaving technique.

The objective is to find out the availability of hand loom double cloth tubular weaving technique from the weavers; construction of hand loom double cloth tubular woven fabrics using mercerized cotton and cotton Lycra combination; to design and develop garments using hand loom double cloth tubular woven fabrics for infants; and to evaluate the acceptance of designed hand loom double cloth tubular seamless garments by textile specialist using a questionnaire.

Materials required are loom and accessories for tubular weaving:

• Handloom, No. of heald shaft – 4, Reed – 80
• Mercerized cotton yarns – 2/100s
• Cotton Lycra yarns – 100 denier

Methods

Preparation of weaving: Weaving is done by two preparations. They are warp yarn and weft yarn preparation.

Preparation of warp yarns: The lengthwise threads are called warp individually they are known as ends. Yarns that are going to be used as warp must pass through two operations. They are spooling and warping. Preparation of weft yarns: Pirn winding: The yarns are given the required amount of twist and then it was wounded over the spools. Then pirn winding frame is used to transfer the spools of yarn onto the pirns that would fit into the shuttle as per the size of the shuttle.

Method of developing tubular fabric

Design: The weaving was done with plain weave design using double cloth tubular weaving technique.

A blank in square indicates that a warp goes below the corresponding weft and ‘x’ mark in the square indicates that the warp float above the weft.

Drafting plan: The draft plan indicates the manner of drawing the ends through the heald eyes and it also tents the number of heald shafts required for a weave repeat. Hence, straight draft was used to produce the cloth. Peg plan: Peg plan denotes the order of lifting the heald shafts. The weaving requires four heald shafts.

Each heald shafts are lifted in four combinations with insertion of weft yarns. The lifting orders were 1 and 234, 3 and 124. Here the face fabric was done using one and three heald shafts and the back fabric using two and four heald shafts.

Denting plan: The double cloth four ends/dent is inserted.

Weaving technique: The method comprises disposing using the warp yarns as divided into the face cloth warp yarns and back cloth warp yarns. Firstly the weft insertion were made to be face cloth warp yarns as face pick and back pick. Again the weft insertion was made to the back cloth as face pick and back pick.

Construction of fabrics: The tubular weaving technique was used to construct four fabrics with 2/100s mercerised cotton and cotton Lycra yarns for infants.

Design and Construction of seamless garment – 1: Fabric width: 12 inch, fabric length: 14 inch. The fabric was constructed, with starting four inch using cotton Lycra weft yarns. After four inch cotton Lycra, 2/100s mercerised cotton was used for remaining 10 inch length. One piece garment woven with cotton Lycra for four inch yoke part on top portion of the garment, which gives elasticity. The design features used for the garment are, a fabric strap is stitch on shoulder and embroidered with blue colour chain stitch.

Design and Construction of seamless garment – 2: Fabric width: 10 inch, fabric length: 12 inch. The fabric was woven with two inches of cotton Lycra as weft on both top and bottom, to get the balloon shape, and the remaining 10 inch was body of the garment is woven with mercerised cotton yarns.

The garment is woven with two inches of Lycra on both top and bottom. The design features used for the garment are, a shoulder strap is stitched with elastic and the bottom is finished with macramé knotting with the self threads. Design and Construction of seamless garment – 3 and 4: Fabric width: 10 inch, fabric length: 12 inch. The fabric was woven with mercerised cotton yarns in warp and weft direction for the required width and length. For 3: The top of the garment is stitch with broad white lace and the shoulder strap was made with white lace. The design features used for the garment are, the bottom is finished with pleated lace and self thread tassels are made for decoration. For embellishment appliqués are stitch on shoulder point of the garment. For 4: The top of the garment is stitch with broad white lace and the shoulder strap was made with white lace. The design features used for the garment are, the bottom is finished with pleated lace and self thread tassels are made for decoration. For embellishment appliqués are stitch on shoulder point of the garment.

Constructed garments were displayed. A demonstration was conducted to explain the concepts of convenience and functional features, and method of construction of tubular seamless garments. Textiles specialists were requested to assess the design feature, surface embellishment used, overall appearance of the designed four garments using a questionnaire.

Conclusion

• From the preliminary interview schedule, it was found evident that the tubular woven products are not available in the market.
• The majority of the textile specialists are aware of seamless garments. All the garments were accepted by the respondents and they felt that, the style features are simple, direct and easy to put on for an infant.
• This makes the construction of garments easy. The respondents ranked garment – 3 as an excellent in design, colour, finishing, and overall appearance.

Hence it was concluded that the designed handloom seamless garments for an infant are unique, comfortable to wear. The constructions of garments are easy and fabric consumption is less thus the large scale production and the cost is low. Thus the design, construction of seamless garments through handloom can be made as a new fashion for the forthcoming trend.

Reference

• Albert P Schimberg (1947), the Story of Therese Neumann. Bruce Publishing Co, page.14
• Atsushi kitamura (1995),Method of manufacturing large-diameter seamless circular woven fabrics, page- 35
• Blattr fritz(1941),“Seamless Tubular Woven Fabric”, page- 10
• L.M. Australasia Pvt. Ltd (1988), the benefits of seamless technology, page – 45.
• Textile Fashion Study (2012), cotton characteristics, page – 23.
• Yengkhom denson singh (2000), “A seamless garments machine”.
• http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki- seamless history.

Dr S Kauvery Bai is Associate Professor in Textiles and Clothing, and Pallavi BS is a research scholar with Smt V.H.D. Central Institute of Home Science, Bangalore.