Children's wear 

The garment we have worked on this time is a jersey tunic in 100% cotton.   The weight of the fabric is 275g per m2.

Fabric
The tunic is made from 100% cotton. Cotton is a natural vegetable fiber from the cotton plant. It has a high next to skin comfort due to its fineness and softness, which is good when you are making children's clothing. The strength of cotton is good, which our bursting test (ISO 13938-1) also show. It broke at 357 kpg, which is really good. High strength is very relevant for children's wear because they are active.  
 
The degree of pilling depends on the quality of the cotton. High quality cotton has long fibers and will therefore pill less. Our test (ISO 12945-1) showed a high degree of pilling.
The result was not a surprise, because even before we did the test, we saw some pilling on the garment.  

The detail with the owl is made of polyester. It didn't say in the care label but after doing a burning test and looking in the microscope we concluded that it must be polyester.    


Composition

The main fabric is a knit called interlock. Interlock is made on two needle beds in which the needles are directly opposed and work alternately. Interlock has a close surface structure and both sides show only face loops and look identical. The fabric is extensible, but not very elastic.

At the bottom of the tunic and the sleeves there is 1x1 rib. Both sides of the fabric show only face loops, the back loops are exposed only when the fabric is stretched in the width direction. 
  

The motive on the tunic is a 4/1 satin.  
 






Dyeing

The fabric have been dyed after it has been knitted. This is a way of making the production price cheaper. What dyestuff you use depends on the final price, direct dyeing is cheaper than many of the others alternatives. Our guess would be that this is the way our tunic have been dyed. The reason why we believe this is the case with our tunic is used and you can clearly see that the color have faded during wash and wear.With the other types of dyestuff you have high fastness properties. Direct dyestuff has a relatively poor fastness to light, washing and perspiration. 

When we tested the color fastness to washing (ISO 105-C06). We did a test both at 40 degrees and 60 degrees, with a washing time of 30 minutes. We didn't see any color transfer to the other test fabric. We believe that it due to the garment being old and having been washed several times. Looking at the care label it states that in the beginning there might be excess color. 
We also did a color fastness to rubbing ( ISO 105-x12). In dry test it didn't rub off any color, in the wet test we saw a minor change on the cotton piece.