Quality control and quality assurance in the apparel industry

Interlinings, also called interfacing, are generally nonwoven fabrics that add more structure and body to garment components like collars, button plackets, waistbands, and cuffs. Interlinings may be fusible or sew-on. Interlining fabric durability is important for garment construction. Fusible interfacing can become unglued from fabric and shift, creating rippling, puckering, and unevenness. Hence, the fusible interfacing should be tested for their performance for defects such as cracking, bubbling, and delamination during their regular use. Fusible interfacings are susceptible to the adhesive bleeding through causing darker spots on the surface called strike-through. Fusible interlinings are assessed for their ability to stay bonded to the fashion fabric and not shift during wear and cleaning. They are also tested for compatibility and shrinkage. Compatibility indicates good drapability, bulk, and support of the fabric at the attachment point. Shrinkage can cause puckering of the attached point and bubbled appearance. The three parameters such as temperature, pressure, and time should be appropriately selected to avoid improper interlining attachment.

However the quality of the face fabrics and non woven interlining used in making samples does not always conform to the materials delivered for production. The face fabrics and their interlinings must therefore be tested again to verify the previously accepted fusing parameters.Fusing of interlinings in garment manufacturing is a very important process. Interlinings are the accessories used between two layers of fabric to keep the different components of apparel in a desired shape or to improve the aesthetics and/or performance. Generally, interlinings are soft, thick, and flexible fabric made of cotton, nylon, polyester, wool and viscose or their blends, which may be coated with some resins. There are two types of double dot non woven interlining in use in the garment production: fusible and non fusible. The interlinings are carefully selected so that they can withstand the conditions during the fabric care and maintenance without any damage during the useful life of a garment. Once the garments are finished and inspected, they are packaged and transported to the retailers or the point of sale to the consumers.

Woven interlinings are majorly 100% cotton based with a thread density of variable count as required for the weight or stiffness needed for a particular use. Now poly-cotton blends are also available to overcome the problems of shrinkage faced in cotton fabrics together with a variety of warp and weft combination like rayon, texturized poly and wool etc.

Advantages of woven interlining

The main advantage of woven fabrics is its strength and stability, hence used for all such applications where strength and stability are needed like the waistband.The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of pressing on bending rigidities of the face fabric, adhesive paste dot non woven interlining and bonded composite fabric and verify the prediction method for bending rigidity of those. Predicting methods of bending rigidity for composite with face fabric and adhesive interlining based on laminated theory were verified with measured bending rigidities and thickness of samples. Bending rigidities and thicknesses of woven fabrics, adhesive interlinings and composites with those were measured by the KES-FB system. Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) film was used for measuring mechanical properties of pressed adhesive interlining. Bending rigidities of adhesive interlinings became larger and thicknesses were reduced compared to those before pressing. Bending rigidities of face fabrics didn’t change though the thicknesses became thinner than before pressing. It was found that the case of considering mechanical properties of pressed face fabric and pressed interlining was more efficient to predict bending rigidity of composite with laminated model.