Thursday, February 14, 2013

School Notes (clarification)

From Monday's notes, I was talking about the process designers use to evaluate fabrics when buying or determining which would be best for a specific garment.  Just to recap, they examine eight categories:

1. Flexibility
2. Compressibility
3. Extensibility
4. Resilience
5. Density
6. Surface Friction: slippery to harsh
7. Surface Contour: smooth to rough
8. Thermal Character

Surface friction and surface contour were confusing because they seemed like similar terms ("friction" and "contour" are both tactile) and used synonyms to describe each other ("slippery" and "smooth", "harsh" and "rough").

Clarification: 

Surface friction
  • tactile (how the fabric feels when you rub your fingers across it) 
  •  wool 
    • The texture is not obvious, but when you touch it it's harsh (scratchy against skin) 

Surface contour
  • visual (what you see) 
  • if there's bumpiness or some other texture 
  • corduroy 
    • ridges are visible
The two categories are related, but they both discuss different aspects of a fabric.

Hope that clears it up!

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