Textiles
- This page is about general textile techniques and tips. For the textiles area at the Maker Nexus makerspace in Sunnyvale, CA, see MN Textiles.
What are textiles?
Textiles are woven goods, where the threads are anything from natural fibers (i.e. cotton, hemp, silk) to synthetics (i.e. polyester, nylon, rayon). Threads are weak by themselves, but when strands are woven together we can make various thread sizes, stretchy fabric, yarns, and even include mixed materials like paper and metals!
Basics of a fabric
Fabrics are made from simple threads and yarns that form solid-looking sheets:
- Warp: Most fabrics are made with long threads that run from the start of a fabric towards the end (usually oriented vertically from you on a roll)
- Weft: These are the threads that run over and under the warp threads, and when these rows are pushed together the fabric appears to be solid (usually oriented horizontally from you on a roll)
- Selvage: these are the tightly woven edges running along with the warp to keep the warp threads from falling off the weft threads
Typically the warp and weft are perfectly 90-degrees perpendicular to each other, but you can make interesting fabrics that have different stretch and strength properties.
Stretching the fabric
Since pulling the warp threads doesn't easily make the fabric longer, unless the threads are synthetic or loosely-made, the fabric will resist stretching. However, pulling sideways will bend the warp threads so the material will tends to stretch more.
Pulling diagonally, aka on the bias, stretches even more because both the warp and weft threads move around.
Strength of a fabric
The tensile strength of the fabric is how much force you can put on it before it breaks apart. Some methods of testing the strength include:
- Strip method testing: A portion of the fabric is clamped into a machine that pulls it until it breaks, measured in Newtons
- Grab method testing: The whole fabric is clamped and typically a central part of the fabric is pulled until it breaks, measured in Newtons
- Ball burst method testing: A steel ball is forced through the fabric, measured in Newtons
Carbon fiber is an interesting fabric where weak carbon fibers are woven together and then set with hard epoxy resin to form very lightweight but stiff materials.
