Woven vs. Knitted Upholstery Repair
Think about a condition, you want to let an upholsterer team do the upholstery repair tasks of your furniture. In this case, you will be asked to choose a fabric you want to see on your furniture. We call that fabric upholstery repair fabric. This fabric can be chosen from a wide variety of choices including woven fabrics and knitted ones.
Woven fabrics can bring advantages in many cases and for many other conditions, you can choose knitted ones instead. The important thing is to know when you need to choose woven fabrics instead of knitted fabrics. In this article, you will know when to choose a woven fabric instead of a knitted fabric for the upholstery repair fabric.
Where is the origin of textiles?
Before we start to discuss where the woven fabrics act better than knitted fabrics, it is better to have look at their origin.
From the historical perspective, textiles have been used for at least 100000 years. This means that human being was able to use textiles even during the stone age.
The differences between the two fabrics are mainly based on their textiles and their yarns and threads.
Speaking about woven or knitted fabrics, we need to say that these are the two main manufacturing processes of textiles. Before we say where you should choose woven fabrics instead of knitted fabrics, you should know the differences between these two.
Woven fabrics
Weavers are the people who invented and used woven fabrics for the first time. To make it easy, weaving textiles involves the interlacing of two or more yarns to create fabric. In these fabrics, we have two main terms: the warp and the weft. These are used to describe the direction of the yarn compared to the loom.
The one which runs up the loom vertically is the warp. And for the weft, think about the horizontal ones. Here there is a tool named shuttle. This is a tool that neatly carries the weft thread through the warp repeatedly to create the final textile.
Woven textiles have a crisscross pattern, which makes these fabrics the easiest ones to spot. On the other hand, they are the easiest to use because they do not unravel if you cut them.
Knitted fabrics
One continuous thread makes the knitted fabrics. To make it clear, think about continuous yarn in hand knitting. As mentioned earlier, these fabrics are made of one thread. However, other things such as needles make interlocking loops in knitted fabrics.
To understand which fabric is knitted and which one is woven, you need to have a look at knits that create loops in the braided patterns.
There are a couple of industries, which are the best for knitted fabrics. For example, the clothing industry is a suitable place to use these fabrics. The reason behind this is the stretchiness of and temperature control of knitted fabrics.
You need to be careful about knitted fabrics in your upholstery repair. If they are being cut, the fabric can unravel because it is interloping single yarn or thread. To prevent this, some companies glue on the cut edge. So, if you do not want to see that bad thing, you must look for the glued products.
What are the differences between knitted and woven fabrics?
We want to discuss this difference from many perspectives including construction, how they stretch and move, and the most common uses of each of these two fabrics.
Construction
As mentioned earlier, woven fabrics are created on weaving looms. The dimension of these looms can be 54 inches wide or more. From the construction perspective, we can understand the main differences between woven fabrics and knitted ones in upholstery repair.
For the woven fabrics several wraps, or longitudinal yarns, and wefts, or latitudinal yarns are used.
How they stretch and move
If you are looking for a high stretchy fabric, you need to look for knitted fabrics. On the other side, woven ones are less stretchy because of their tightly woven threads or independent yarns. Usually, woven fabrics only stretch diagonally and are why they are the premier choice for upholstery. This leaves less room for the fabric to slouch and change shape when on a piece of furniture.
Knitted fabrics are stretchable because there is less tension during knitting and these fabrics are constructed from a single yarn or thread.
Most common uses
The knitted fabrics are stretchable, and this makes them more suitable for clothing purposes. Additionally, they are preferred in warmth, comfort, and wrinkle-resistant applications. Moreover, these fabrics are softer than woven fabrics and this makes them less durable in a long time.
On the other hand, woven fabrics can be more durable in long term. They also lose their colour barely. This is because they come in less contact with cleaning agents such as bleach and detergent.
At last, we need a conclusion to make the choice easy for you. For your upholstery repair uses, it is better to have look at woven fabrics instead of knitted ones. On the other hand, if you want to buy fabrics for apparel uses, you can count on knitted fabrics. Moreover, if you want to wash the final product more, you must choose woven fabrics because they shrink less than knitted fabrics.
To make a long story short, we provided all the necessary information to make it easy for you to choose woven fabrics or knitted ones. However, you may not be so expert in this respect, and this chooses the best fabric hard. Therefore, we suggest you contact our professional experts, who will be happy to help you with this purpose.
All you need to know to choose the best fabric for your upholstery repair