Objective Evaluation of Pucker in Three-Dimensional Garment Seams

This paper considers the objective evaluation of seam puckering on three-dimensional garments. In order to simulate garment surfaces in three dimensions, seamed samples are supported on five different surfaces: plane (both with and without tilt) and curved (both convex and concave). A set of five samples having seams with varying degrees of pucker are prepared from each of five fabrics, and profiles parallel to the seams are measured using a laser distance scanner. These profiles are then filtered using a band-pass Cheby shev filter (where the “frequencies” are measured in cycles/m) to remove the high frequency component contributed by the individual threads or fabric texture and the low-frequency component contributed by the shape of the sample. These band-pass filtered profiles are analyzed by calculating four statistical parameters and comparing these with the subjective AATCC grades. Excellent correlation is obtained for two of the parameters with the subjective pucker grades.