Chapter I: Front Matter

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS BULLETIN

VOL. X. NOV. 25, 1912 NO. 13

[Entered February 14, 1902, at Urbana, Illinois, as second-class matter
under Act of Congress of July 16, 1894.]

Department of Household Science

Some Points in Choosing
Textiles

By

Charlotte M. Gibbs, M. A.

PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY
URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

SOME POINTS IN CHOOSING TEXTILES

In the past century a great change has come about in the position of the woman in the home, which has very vitally affected her relation to the textile industries. In the early days in this country nearly every woman produced the clothing for herself and family, also the household linens from the raising of the sheep or flax to the finished product. Now all is changed; with the introduction of ready-made suits and other garments, even the sewing is rapidly going from the home, while the manufacture of cloth is a forgotten art.

In olden times the quality of home-spun and woven material was the best possible to be obtained from the materials and methods known. Woolen cloth was all wool, and linen cloth was not adulterated with starch, or half cotton. Honest and durable materials were the rule of the day.

With the introduction of machinery and the factory system came keen competition. Modern discoveries, chemical and otherwise, have increased the possibilities of cotton, linen, silk and wool so that now it is difficult to recognize the original fiber in some of the materials sold.

Thus on the one hand the field of textile knowledge has grown very much, while on the other hand the knowledge of women concerning textile fabrics has decreased, since they are no longer the makers of cloth, nor do they always gain a knowledge of its characteristics through the making of garments. The result has been that women depend more and more on the word of clerks, who are often as ignorant as themselves, until by painful experience the buyers learn some of the things to be avoided.

As cost of living increases, and demands upon the family purse increase, it is more and more important that the woman of the household should know how to spend the family income most economically. Since from ten to twenty percent of this income is spent for clothing and house furnishing, it is imperative that more thought and careful study should be put upon this branch of household economy. The object of this bulletin is to give some bits of information about textile fibers, their manufacture and adulteration, which may help in gaining that judgment in buying essential to every woman.

Certain adulterations and devices of the modern manufacturer are so skillfully concealed as to be detected only by the use of chemical tests, or the high power microscope. With these this bulletin will not deal, but only with those qualities and adulterations which may be detected without the aid of laboratory equipment. Much of course may be learned by experience, but it seems better to save time and money by knowing beforehand what is to be demanded, what guarded against.

Each one of the common materials used for textile fabrics, cotton, linen, wool and silk, has its characteristics, each its definite uses. Certain peculiarities in physical or chemical nature make each fiber peculiarly adapted to certain uses, but so long as these general qualities are maintained the variety of materials produced from these fibers may be enormous. Combinations of fibers in one material, adulteration with cheaper fibers, or with starches or metallic salts, may serve to reduce the cost, and yet the purpose of the material may be fulfilled. For certain purposes the materials may be used interchangeably.

COTTON

Cotton is cheap and very plentiful. It has short, flat fibers, with a spiral twist, thus giving elasticity and the possibility of being spun into fine thread. Being in itself very useful and inexpensive and capable of replacing, to a certain extent, any other fiber, it is used in very large quantities the world over, and is manufactured into a great variety of materials. The quality of these materials depends on the strength of the fibers, the fineness or coarseness of material, the weave, the color and design, and the adulterations.

Cotton, being cheapest, is not adulterated with any of the other fibers mentioned, when the material is to be sold as cotton cloth, but it can be made to appear heavier by the addition of mixtures called sizing. Starches, gums, dextrine, glue, china clay, as well as other ingredients in varying proportions, constitute this sizing which may add a large percent to the weight of the cloth. The spaces between the threads are filled up and a good finish is given to the cloth, although the wearing quality is not increased. If present in large quantities the cloth is greatly reduced in weight and firmness after the first washing.

Adulterations of this kind can be detected by the feeling, a large quantity imparting a harshness to the material. In very thin fabrics the sizing may often be detected by holding the cloth up to the light when the starch shows between the threads. Washing or thorough boiling of a sample will show the amount of sizing present.

Another method of adulterating cotton is shown in certain kinds of dotted swiss. A good swiss has thread dots woven or embroidered in the cloth. Fig. 1A shows a piece of material sold at the price of a good swiss, but in this case the dots are merely a heavy paste, printed on the cloth. Fig. 1B shows the result of continued washing, where the dots have disappeared, and Fig. 1C, the result of ironing with a hot iron, which turned the spots brown before the cloth itself is harmed.

Mercerized cotton is a cloth produced by the action of a strong alkali on cotton fiber rinsed under tension. It is a strong, attractive material, with good wearing qualities. An imitation of this may be made by the action of very heavy and very hot cylinders on ordinary cotton cloth. The mercerized cloth has a high luster which it retains after many washings while the imitation loses its luster with the first washing.

Sometimes cotton cloth which has been on the market for some time is weakened by the action of the chemicals used in bleaching, dyeing or in the sizing. This may be easily detected by tearing the cloth.

Standard cotton materials such as muslins, organdies, percales, calicoes and sheeting, differ only in the weight of the material, fineness of thread, hardness of twist and method of finish. Ginghams have the thread dyed before weaving and fancy weaves are frequently used. Duck, denim and some other heavy materials have very hard twisted threads and are frequently woven with a twill. Silkolene is a trade name for a fine cotton cloth with a silky finish given after the cloth is woven.

Mercerized cottons make lustrous materials as poplin, imitation pongee and numerous attractive house furnishing materials.

India “linon” is entirely cotton, with a fleecy surface on the wrong side, as is “outing flannel” and “canton flannel”.

Many “tussahs,” “voiles” and “economy linens” and other materials with rather deceptive names are cotton materials made to imitate silk, wool or linen.

LINEN

Linen was formerly the most important vegetable fiber, and was commonly used for all household purposes. Of late years it has been largely replaced by cotton with which it may be compared although there are still uses for which we demand linen, and others for which we prefer linen to cotton.

The linen fiber is long, smooth and quite lustrous, when spun into a thread. It is very strong and there are not so many fuzzy ends as are found in cotton. Cloth made from it is not only lustrous and rich looking, but because of its smoothness stays clean longer than cotton. The snowy whiteness of linen obtained with some difficulty in bleaching is quite permanent, and since the fiber takes dyes with difficulty and parts with them quite readily, it also does not retain stains as persistently as cotton does.

Linen is much more expensive than cotton, and when linen prices are paid linen should be demanded. Since the two fibers are rather hard to distinguish, especially when heavily starched and given a good finish, it is quite easy to deceive the buyer. “Linen” collars are frequently largely cotton, “linen” handkerchiefs may not have a thread of linen, as is apt to be the case with rather inexpensive embroidered handkerchiefs, and table “linen” may be mercerized cotton, cotton and linen, or even ordinary cotton.

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