How to Align Plaid and Stripes When Making Plaids and Stripes Underwear ？

The process of "matching plaids and stripes" is often encountered in the production of knitted underwear, especially when using plaid or striped fabrics to produce knitted boxer briefs. At the moment when we are focusing on improving the added value and product quality of underwear products, the effect of the "matching strips" process on the quality of underwear has become a standard for measuring the quality of this type of underwear. For example, the state stipulates that if the "matching pattern" of underwear exceeds the allowable mutual difference, it is a defect, and the entire batch of underwear can easily be judged as a substandard product. This also reminds underwear companies that they should pay attention to the issue of "matching the pattern and the strip".

All types of underwear have strict requirements for "matching the right strips", and different products have different requirements. For example, for men's boxer briefs with a fly, the horizontal strips must be aligned first, and then the front and back rise, shorts seams, and fly must be aligned; if there are vertical stripes, the left and right sides of the pants must also be symmetrical. For men’s boxer briefs without a placket, the front, back, left and right panels must be symmetrical, the horizontal stripes of the left and right panels must be aligned, the front and middle sections must be aligned, and the side seams must be aligned.

To achieve the purpose of matching grids and strips, we should mainly consider three aspects: First, we must strictly control the fabrics. Fabric quality is the source. Whether it is knitted fabrics or woven fabrics, there is a certain weft skew. If the situation is serious，it is impossible to "match the grid and match the strips". If the weft of the gray fabric is found to be skewed before cutting, it can be shaped and processed. Second, it is necessary to cooperate closely in the three processes of laying out, spreading and cutting to jointly complete the "matching the grid and strips" process. Third, we must strengthen the daily management of sewing workers to ensure that they are "matching the squares and strips" when sewing.

As far as spreading and cutting is concerned, so far, there is no fully automatic cloth spreading machine specifically designed to spread cloth "on grids and strips", and the effect of a fully automatic cutting machine that can cut "on grids and strips" has not yet been highly recognized by users. It is still difficult to use fully-automatic spreading machines, fully-automatic cutting machines and other equipment to complete the "matching the grid and strips " spreading and cutting of striped and plaid fabrics. This is closely related to the characteristics of the fabric. Fabrics such as downwind strips and patterns have certain differences in the arrangement and layout of the strips when viewing the fabric surface from different directions, while fabrics with patterns such as flowers, plants, trees, and animals are directional. As long as you don't pay attention to the directionality of the fabric, there will be problems such as pattern inversion or inconsistent patterns on the front and back pieces of the underwear.

When making underwear made of striped or plaid fabrics, as long as there is a "matching grid and striping" process requirement, workers need to carefully handle every step from CAD layout to cloth spreading and cutting.

When the style design requires stripes, the layout template cannot be placed arbitrarily, such as the connection between the front midsection and the left and right side stripes of men's boxer briefs. In fact, because the fabric strip specifications are not uniform and the fabric quality is uneven, the clothing CAD layout "strip and grid" system often encounters difficulties in use and has certain applicable limitations. When laying out striped fabrics and underwear, it is necessary to set the alignment symbols of the pattern. The requirements for alignment should be seen clearly, as they are divided into part alignment, vertical alignment, horizontal alignment and full vertical and horizontal alignment. When laying out materials, there are three forms: one is to hang the needle grid, the other is to reserve the amount of seam for adjustment, and the third is to reserve a grid for adjustment.

When the marker is in the form of a needle grid, the two components of the strip and grid need to be accurately arranged according to the grid requirements. When marking the pattern, the strips should be marked accurately to ensure that the strips are aligned during sewing assembly. Using this method to lay out materials requires that the factory must use positioning hanging pins when paving materials, which is the "patch needle" method currently used by underwear factories. On the bottom layer of fabric with the layout pattern, find the part that requires special craftsmanship and tie it with grid needles. Every time you lay a layer, find the same "grid" or "strip" as the lower layer of fabric in that part, and tie it with the grid needles.

In order to achieve good results, some factories use a special strip and grid table (needle bed) when hanging needles to position and lay materials and cut, and some use infrared positioning devices. Industry insiders recommend that the length of the positioning pin be controlled within "the height of the material plus 2 cm", and the height of the material when cutting is preferably less than 7 cm.

Use nails to hang pins on the four sides of the fabric to ensure that the upper and lower layers of the grid in these parts are not misaligned as much as possible, so that the pieces of each layer of fabric are aligned with the grid, and then the pattern is cut. Moreover, the combined parts should be arranged in the same grid direction as much as possible to avoid affecting the grid alignment due to uneven raw material grids. In addition, the warp and weft direction of the fabric must be corrected when laying the material.

There is also a layout method, which does not draw the pattern according to the original shape, but enlarges the pattern appropriately to leave a margin. When cutting, you should cut according to the enlarged rough sample. After cutting the blank, mark the clean sample layer by layer according to the grid requirements and cut out the pieces. This method is more accurate than the first method. You can lay the material without using positioning hanging pins, but it cannot be cut and molded in one go. It is more labor-intensive and more material-consuming. This method is often used when laying out high-end underwear.

Since it is difficult to ensure that the cutter is absolutely perpendicular to the fabric when cutting, there will inevitably be errors in the size of each layer of material. It is difficult to align the stripe pattern of the lower layer of material with the stripe pattern of the upper layer of material. This requires other than cutting materials when laying out materials. Each sample pattern should be arranged to the corresponding parts according to the design requirements, and a certain amount of cutting should be left so that the actual cut piece during cutting is larger than the pattern, so that the requirements for grid and strip can be ensured during sewing. On the contrary, if the cut piece is the same size as the pattern, or the margin is very small, it will be more difficult to "match the strips and grids" of the lower cut pieces when sewing.

All in all, the alignment of the plaid and stripe patterns of underwear is not only beautiful and classy, but it also increases a lot of fabric and labor costs, so the price of underwear with matching grids and stripes is correspondingly higher.

• Xiamen Unitex Trade CO.,LTD.
• Website: www.unitexunderwear.com
• E-mail: will@unitexchina.cn
• Tel: 0086-186 5081 3853