Textiles: What are you wearing?

We use textiles everyday, and while it fills important roles in our lives, we often take it for granted due to its sheer commonality. From our cloths to the roofs of our cars textiles and threads are everywhere, so I think it's high time we take an in depth look at whats right in front of our eyes 24/7. To clarify textiles are the threads used to make pretty much anything that is vaguely cloth related. Here we will discuss the difference between types of fibers and how they might be used to make products.

a bullet proof kevlar weave (woven)

To start there are two major categories for all textiles. Synthetic and natural. the descriptions are fairly self explanatory but I will expand on them bellow.

Natural:

Natural fibers are what you would collect from things like plants and animals in our environment. Some common ones include wool or linen and usually natural fibers and threads have some common trends. Natural fibers are often very variable in length, but fairly short. making it difficult to take single strands and use them for overall structure (although one exception to this is silkworm silk which can make very smooth threads that can stretch for miles). Additionally natural fibers differ greatly when they are either plants or animals. Animal fibers are scaled on a microscopic level and stick to things better while plant fibers are often smoother but can absorb water unlike synthetic fibers.

a lineup of common fibres, the only synthetic fibre here is polyester which you can see is completely smooth.

Synthetic:

Synthetic fibres are made by man out of materials that can't be grown. Often this means the utilisation of plastics or polyesters that can be spun or combined into different textiles with different qualities. One major quality is that most synthetic fibers are thermoplasts. Or that they melt under heat, instead of burning. Additionally synthetic fibers are often stronger then natural ones, although the strongest known textile is actually spider silk, which has been tested to be 5 times stronger then steel and twice the strength of kevlar. Some recognisable fibers could be nylon, which is a material similar to silk but cheaper, and kevlar, which is prized for its strength and ability to be woven together into bullet proof padding.

Blended fibers:

To put it simply, blended fibers are when two or more fibers (usually a synthetic and natural) are intertwined and bonded to form a thread with properties of both fibers. Bonded fibers can be done for several reasons. While you can increase the strength of a fiber and add properties to a cloth often it is done to decrease the costs of the overall fabric. When you have a particularly expensive fiber (such as silk) and need to make an object in bulk, you can instead blend it with something like nylon, that has similar properties, to reduce cost while still allowing the manufacturer to state that their product was made with said expensive material.

Combining fibres into fabrics:

Now that we know about the basic groups of textiles it's important to understand how they may be combined into the clothes or fabrics that we use. And why we might use some of these techniques.

Knitting:

Knitting is the process of looping one thread in on itself in a repetitive motion until you create a sheet of fabric. Usually knitting is done as a past time because the motion is both repetitive and also can be done without large motions necessary for lace making and weaving. Knitted materials are often fairly stretchy due to the structure but have an overall fairly good tensile (pull) strength. however if one strand were to break the entire thing could come apart.

Weaving:

Weaving is the act of interlacing two threads together in a grid like pattern. Weaving is often times the most common interlacing pattern used as it is simple enough for machines to mimic with ease. Weaving also has very good shear strength and load bearing strength. and multiple types of threads can be combined in the manor to make a stronger fabric

Braiding:

Braiding is essentially the same as weaving with the over and under motion but includes 3 or more fibres.

Felting:

Felting is the process of matting groups of fibres together to make a sheet. Felted fabrics can be very uneven and can be visually unappealing however they are often hard to tear or unravel. Felted sheets have to be made with natural fibres however as the process of felting can only be achieved if the interlocking fibres have hooks or scales on them that you only see in fibres like the wool you see above.

Lace making:

Lace making is the process of running a needle and thread through a previously made bed of fabric to make an aesthetically pleasing image. Often this is done for home decorations or simply as a past time as art. There is very little practical application for lace making.