Introduction to Textile
Fabric
Part 2: Plain Knit
Dr. Jimmy Lam
Institute of Textiles & Clothing
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Content
• Basic Knit, tuck and miss loop in single knit
fabrics.
• Characteristics of all knit loops (plain)
fabric.
• Characteristics of knit + tuck single knit
fabric
• Characteristics of knit + miss single knit
fabric
• Accordian fabric (knit + tuck + miss loops)
Basic Loops for knitting
(weft knitting)
Basic Loops
•
The single knit fabrics can be made
of:
1.
2.
3.
4.
All Knit loops
Knit & miss loops
Knit & tuck loops
Knit & tuck & miss loops
Plain knit
(All Knit loops)
• If a single knit
fabric is composed
entirely by knit
loops, the fabric is
called plain knit or
jersey knit.
Plain Knit
(Notation)
• The above loop diagrams
indicate the face and back
side of a plain knit.
• It consists of many loops of
the same shape and is not
easy to draw by hand;
therefore, knitters use
simple notation to represent
different type of loops.
• X= technical face loop;
O=technical back loop
Plain Knit
General Features
• Plain knit fabrics are quite good in cover and
elasticity and can be knitted by following machines:
– V-bed machines
– Circular machines and
– Fully fashion machines.
• The suitable gauges of knitting are from 2.5 to 36
needles per inch; that means the plain fabrics can
be cover the whole range of fabric thickness, in
which the fabric weights include 80 g/m2 for fine
shirting to 600 g/m2 for heavy weight outwear.
• The yarn for plain knit fabrics can be unroved from
both ends.
Plain Knit
End Uses
• The end uses of fabric mainly depend
on the following:
–
–
–
–
–
Material used;
Yarn linear density or count;
Machine gauge;
Fabric thickness and weight; and
Type of finishing
Plain Knit
Shirting
• Produced on the finer gauge circular sinker top
machine.
• Example: 28 gauge machine knitting 30Ne cotton
or 150 Denier texturised polyester. Fabric weight
is 100 g/m2
• The most common materials for shirting fabrics
are:
– 100% cotton;
– 65/35 polyester/cotton blend; and
– 100% texturised polyester filament
• Most plain fabrics are piece dye. Yarn dyeing is
only used for fabric with colour striping.
Plain Knit
Underwear
• The machine gauge for underwear fabrics
may be slightly coarser than those for
shirting; this is 20-24 gauge and yarn used
are mainly cotton.
• All wool underwear fabrics are knitted on
14-16 gauge machines which will give
thicker fabrics for winter underwears
Plain knit fabrics
with
Knit + Tuck loop
Plain Knit with
Knit + tuck loop
• All knitted fabrics are formed by knit
loop. Tuck loops alone can never be formed
into a fabric.
• However, tuck loops are used for the
following purposes:
–
–
–
–
To produce colour patterns;
To give open work or see through effect,
To make raise effect
To make fabric ladder resist
Plain knit with tuck loop
Characteristics
of tuck loops
1. Invisible from the face side of
fabric
2. Will increase fabric width
3. Will reduce fabric length
4. Better Ladder resistance
5. Thicker and heavier fabric
6. Open work effect
Fabric Width
Fabric A is wider than fabric B as it has more tuck
stitches on each course
Fabric Length
Which fabric (A, B or C) is
shortest?
Open Work effect (See
through) with tuck loops
Common single knit tuck
structures
Miss Loop
Knit + Miss fabrics
Miss Loop
• Miss loop is called float or welt, is
rather similar to tuck loop as it
cannot be seen from the face side of
fabric.
• The miss loop appears as short length
of horizontal yarn at the back of
single knit fabric
Characteristics of
Miss Loop
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Invisible from the face of fabric
Will reduce the fabric width
Will reduce the fabric height
Will reduce the fabric elasticity
Will increase the fabric density
Application of
Miss loop
• Miss loop is used for jacquard (colour
design) single knit jersey knitting/
• It is used to hide the unwanted
colours at the back of the fabric.
• Example: shirting fabrics for casual
wear
• Example: sweater fabrics
Accordian fabric
• This is single knit jacquard fabric with
knit, tuck and miss loops on the same
course.
• The knit and miss loops are for colour
pattern knitting, while the tuck loops are
used to tie-in the long floats at the back
of the fabric and make the float lengths
shorter.
Discussion
• Why fabric is narrower with
insertion of float loop?
• Why fabric is wider with insertion of
tuck loop?
• Why knit + tuck loops will never be
used for underwear fabric?