After talking about fabrics last week, today we are going to talk about knits. The majority of fabrics used in clothing are knitted or woven. When people think of knits, they mainly think of the beautiful chunky knitted sweaters, but also a t-shirt or even the net of the oranges is knitted. The chunky knits are made on a flat knitting machine and for the finer knits a circular knitting machine is used.
The flat knitting machine can be used to make a lot of different knits. The best known is the right left knit (knit purl). The right side of the knit consists of small v's and the left side of arcs. With a right left knit, it is the v's, so the right side that is visible on the outside.
The flat knitting machine consists of a straight line of a lot of loose knitting needles which can be set to active or inactive one by one. In this way you could turn them on alternately and create a looser knit, because there is more space before the next stitch is made. The coarseness of a flat knit is determined in gauge, this is the number of needles used per inch (2.54 cm). If you use 12 needles per inch, a fine knit comes out of the machine, but if you use 3 per inch, a much coarser knit comes out. Of course, it is then customary to also use a thicker yarn.
With a circular knitting machine, as the name suggests, you knit in a circle. This can be done in different sizes, for example socks or tights can be made on it, but it is also possible to knit a ticking for your mattress. As already mentioned, tights are also knitted and it is therefore possible to create very fine knits with this machine.
As with the weaves of last week, there is also a warp and a weft knit in knits. Here we look at the direction of the yarns. If the yarns form vertical lines in the knit, it is called a warp knit. If the yarns form horizontal lines in the knit, it is called a weft knit.
It is good to know here that a weft knit does not ladder, a hole can occur but because these yarns are attached horizontally in several places, no ladder will occur. You see this for example with a t-shirt made of tricot. With a warp knit you do see ladders occur, just look at your tights.
Hopefully I didn't get too technical today ;) If there's anything that's unclear or if you have any other questions, our message box is always open so feel free to leave a message.