Studies in Behaviour of Drapability of Stitched Fabric

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction
Drape is an important component of the aesthetic and appeal of the apparels.
Drape is one of the major factor which affects fit and appearance of the apparel. It is
low stress mechanical property, which influences the final appearance of apparel. Drape
decides the fall of the garment over the wearer’s body. The drape is expressed in terms
of drape coefficient, value of drape coefficient depends on the type of fabric and seam
used for stitching particular product. Drape is defined as “extent to which a fabric will
deform when it is allowed to hang under its own weight.” (IS: 8357 - 1977) [1].
Fabric drape provides the information about the deformation produced by the
gravity when the part of the fabric is draped. This unique property makes a sense of
fullness and a graceful appearance, which distinguishes fabrics from other sheet
materials. In addition, drape enables a fabric to be molded into a desirable shape or to
produce a smooth, flowing form by its own weight. When a fabric is draped; the fabric
can bend in one or more directions based on its configuration. Curtains usually drapes
in one direction, whereas garments and upholstery exhibit a complex three-dimensional
form with a double curvature. Initially, the fabric is draped rapidly based on its weight
during draping, overcoming the resistance associated with its stiffness, after which the
stiffness of the fabric structure resist further deformation.
The stitched fabric or the apparel is produced by cutting and sewing the fabric
pieces together. A seam is a joint where sequence of stitches unites two or more pieces
of the fabrics and affects the fabric stiffness greatly. This seam also affects the draping
behaviour of the fabrics. It is very difficult to realize the appearance of the apparels
without consideration of type seams used for the construction of the garment.
Therefore, it is very important to optimize the seam parameters such as type of seam,
stitch type, and type of garment. Bending is the measure of the drape property of the
fabric in a 2D way. The Shirley Stiffness Tester using the cantilever principle was
found to be the first instrument to measure bending properties. Characterizing drape
using a two-dimensional measure imposed many limitations in describing the complex,
anisotropic behaviour of fabrics. Fabric Research Laboratories developed the F.R.L.
Drapemeter by Chu, Cummings, and Teixeira [2]. Later Cusick [3] based on a similar

D.K.T.E.S TEI, ICHALKARANJI, SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR 1

 Studies in Behaviour of Drapability of Stitched Fabric

principle developed the instrument to measure the stiffness of a fabric and to overcome
the limitations of estimating fabric drape via two-dimensional measurement of stiffness.
By developing three dimensional drapemeter, Chu et al and Cusick made a significant
contribution to the practical determination of this fabric property by measuring drape in
three-dimensions.
Many instruments have been developed and marketed for the measurement of
the 2 dimensional drape since 3 dimensional involves double curvature deformation. 2D
drape test cannot, however, accurately reflect fabric drape, since the 3D is quite
complex deformation of the fabrics. Therefore, to bitterly quantify the latter, various
objective measurement techniques have been designed to simulate the subjective
methods. The most widely adopted method is to allow a circular disc of fabric to drape
into folds around the edges of a small circular platform or template. Such instrument is
commonly referred as “drapemeter”.
The future of textile and garment manufacturing industry and the online
retailing system will need to have a more accurate prediction of the 3D behaviour of
fabric and garment design. Fabrics used for apparels vary widely from light weight to
heavy weight and it may affect structural aspects of design such as folds, pleats, tucks
etc. Measurement and characterization of fabric drape, even when considering actual
fabric samples, remains a challenge for researchers. This is largely due to the diversity
in fabric composition which includes a variety of fibers, yarns, blends and finishes
applied. Early efforts, to analyse fabric drape utilized was relatively crude subjective
methods based on experience, observation, and visual comparison. Evaluation of drape
of apparel products still relies on such subjective methods. These methods have proved
sufficient for evaluating physical prototypes in the design process, but they are
inadequate to guide the development of virtual draping software to effectively capture
fabric mechanical properties. During the recent years, because of the development of
the computers, the investigation of the fabric drape has attracted the attention of many
researchers. This could enable to realize the clothing, computer aided design (CAD) by
introducing the fabric properties, in which drape is the key element.
Studies of fabric bending and drape are mainly restricted to fabric without seam
as found in the critical literature survey. For the stitched fabric many parameters like
different types of seams, Seam Allowances, stitch length and sewing thread size etc.
have not been studied for the effect on the drapeability of fabric. So the study will be
helpful to the textile industry in general and apparel industry specifically, in terms of
D.K.T.E.S TEI, ICHALKARANJI, SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR 2
 Studies in Behaviour of Drapability of Stitched Fabric

the actual drape requirement of different fabrics, which are commercially used as per
the end use of the fabrics by various computational methods.

1.2 Objectives of the research

Drape is defined as “extent to which a fabric will deform when it is allowed to
hang under its own weight.” (IS: 8357 - 1977). It is one of the very important aesthetic
properties of apparel. Drape research has captured the interest of researchers in textile
and apparel industries. Because of the recent developments in the CAD-CAM for the
apparel industry, the drape becomes more important property to be considered for the
three-dimensional capturing of the apparel drape.
Seams are the joint where the sequence of stitches unites two or more layers of
the fabric and can affect the drape largely. So the effect of different seams on
drapability of the stitched fabric will be more useful for the apparel industry. The
properties of the drape with respect to seam can be established by various methods like
computational techniques, image analyzing, etc. The data collected will be analyzed by
applying statistical significance tests such as t-test, ANOVA etc.
The research would benefit the apparel industry in the general and standard
assessment method for the drape, and could eventually lead to improving apparels in
terms of its appearance with the seams and stitches.
The objectives can be summarized as follows,
1. Design and development of the digital drapemeter for acquiring the draped
images from the stitched fabrics.
2. Validation of the digital drapemeter.
3. Analysis and comparison of drape coefficient of digital drapemeter with
conventional drape measurement.
4. Analysis of the drapability through MATLAB with the help of a developed
instrument.
5. To find out the correlation between the conventional drapemeter and newly
designed digital drapemeter.
6. To study the drapability of the bottom wear and upper wear.
7. To experimentally investigate the drape coefficient of a stitched fabric with
seams

D.K.T.E.S TEI, ICHALKARANJI, SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR 3