Effect of Seams on Drape of Fabrics

Abstract

Drape of the fabric is its ability to hang freely in graceful folds when some area of it is supported over a surface and the rest is unsupported. Drape is a unique property that allows a fabric to be bent in more than in one direction, When two-dimensional fabric are converted to three-dimensional garment form. In the present study, the effects of sewing of different seam were selected on different fabric and their behaviors were studied. In this study drape of ten fabrics are analyzed with three types of seams and three stitch densities. Sample without seam is a control sample and drape of seamed samples are compared with control sample to analyse the drape behavior of seamed fabrics. This paper presents a fundamental drape analysis of seamed fabrics using drape meter. Drape behavior is determined in terms of drape coefficient. The effect of seams on the drape coefficient and Drape profile has been made. Drape coefficients significantly differs between the fabrics and also between the seam stitch density combinations. Investigating drape on
seamed fabrics can improve fabric end use application.

Key words: drape, computer aided design, seam, stitch density, Design of Experiments