The use of a polytrimethylene terephthalate/polyester bi-component filament for the development of seamless garments

Seamless garments are popular knitted products nowadays. They are widely used as power stretchable underwear, outerwear and sportswear for which the use of high elastic yarns is indispensable. For seamless garments knitted with circular seamless machines, polyurethane (PU)/polyamide (PA) core-spun yarn is commonly used as the base yarn in a plating fabric to enhance the elasticity of the garment. However, the use of PU/PA core-spun yarn has encountered some problems, such as the difficulty in size control and the ageing of PU elastic yarn. In this study, the polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT)/polyester (PET) bi-component filament was used to replace the PU/PA core-spun yarn for the development of seamless garments due to its excellent extensibility and elastic recovery property. The manufacturing processes, including knitting, pre-treatment, dyeing and finishing, were developed, and the end-use performance of the fabrics, which were respectively produced with the PTT/PET bi-component filament and PU/PA core-spun yarn as the base yarn and PA fiber as the face yarn for seamless garments, was compared based on the five different mechanical and physical properties. The results show that the fabric made of the PTT/PET bi-component filament has much better dimensional stability, much better elastic recovery property and much better wrinkle resistance than those of the fabric made of PU/PA core-spun yarn. It is expected that this study could help us to further exploit the use of the PTT/PET bi-component filament in the development of seamless garments in the future.