UNDERSTANDING FABRIC STRUCTURES

Fabric is the material that is used to make clothing or household articles. The third successive stage in the making of a fabric is understanding the various methods of creating fabrics. Following are basic structures that are used to form fabrics which can be listed in the decreasing order of importance as:

You all must have seen the seat of a chair or a charpoy made with nylon or cotton. These are made with tape - when two sets of tapes are interlaced with each other at right angles. Similarly a fabric is also made by interlacing two sets of yarns at right angles.

Woven fabrics are made by interlacing two sets of yarns at right angles to each other. The length wise yarns are called the warp yarns / ends and the width wise yarns are called the weft yarns / filling / picks. The lengthwise edges of the fabric are the selvages. Grain indicates a direction parallel to either the warp or the weft. Direction i.e. 45 degree to both the warp and weft is termed as bias. The stretch is maximum along the direction of the bias. Woven fabrics have their best drape in the bias direction.