Disintegrating cotton
Charlene Bloch Abrams
damask into a skirt, wore it the next day, only to find large rips in
the skirt. At first I thought perhaps I'd been careless with my rotary
cutters, brushing them against the fabric, but I soon noticed (when I
tried to fix it with some black fusible interfacing on the wrong side)
that the fabric was just plain weak, and had obviously ripped from the
wearing. In quite a few spots I was easily able to tear the fabric with
a fairly gentle tug!
I've never had this happen to me. Does this mean you shouldn't prewash
your fabrics until just before you're about to sew them? Did I just
get some cruddy fabric? Why me???
Charlene in St Louis
bl...@osler.wustl.edu
Marilee Marshall
I'll be the offending element is due to an aging synthetic fabric...
just breaking down from time. One of the reasons I prefer 100%
cotton or silk thread. I can't tell you how many garments I've made
seems to start falling apart at the seems because of aging synthetic
thread. Some of the time I think it's because of repreated exposure
to laundry detergent and/or sun.
marilee
Dawn Burgess
Well, I haven't had that experience with synthetics, but then I don't
use them much. Since the first poster specified that the fabric
was cotton, I doubt the problem is aging synthetic fabric. It sounds
like simple dry-rot to me. It happenst most often with older
fabrics, and with 100% cotton. I have seen it in new sheets, too,
which were also 100% cotton. I believe it is caused by some micro-
organism, but I am not sure. Anyway, as far as I know there is nothing
you can do about it, and it wasn't caused by prewashing. Most of
the fabrics I've seen it in weren't prewashed.
Dawn
John Blundell
bbro...@orion.oac.uci.edu "Bruce T. Brodnax " writes:
>
> Dry-rot is caused by a fungus which requires a damp environment. What an
> oxymoron!
>
> It lives on cellulose (to the best of my knowledge), and so affects
> (infects?) wood, and would conceivably also affect cotton or linen.
>
> Easiest way to prevent it would be to make certain your fabric is bone
> dry before storage, and stored in a dry environment.
>
I agree with what Bruce has written. I'd just like to add that the term dry-
rot distinguishes the condition from wet-rot. The latter occurs in wetter
conditions. Dry-rot, while needing water, can thrive in conditions which are
not wet enough for wet-rot. So, at the risk of repeating Bruce's advice, the
drier the storage conditions, the better.
--
John Blundell at home in Stevenage, UK.
Jo...@Blundell.Demon.Co.UK
Daren't risk a .sig line in case Bill Gates has already patented it.
Babs Woods
>In article <CqsCn...@eskimo.com> ti...@eskimo.com (Susan Profit) writes:
> It is saddening to seen
> untreated flannel in the hands of a sewer along with child's sleepwear
> pattern - a potential tragedy of the one is used with the other.
>
>Let's look at this scenario again. In order for a child's pajamas to
>catch fire, they have to get in contact with a flame. This used to
>sometimes happen with little girls' nighties and open-flame heaters. When
>flame-retardant treatment was initially required, there were a lot of
>open-flame gas heaters around. These are not very common any more.
We recently had this discussion offline on a mailing list I'm
on (not devoted to children, just several of us old friends who now
include several parents with small children). It comes down to these
things, off the top of my head:
1) Flame-retardant fabrics are frequently also synthetics. When
these fabrics get hot they melt. They melt into your child's
body. They cause far more severe injuries when that happens
than cotton fabric on fire.
2) The treatment washes out after a while, as I recall, so now you're
left with the synthetic fabric, which as above, melts.
3) The issues of exposure to fire differ now than when we were kids
to be sure, but kids haven't changed. Some parents still smoke
and leave lighters around without realizing it or the danger.
Few parents really have any real backup so when they're asleep
and the kids are up in the early am, the kids can get into all
sorts of trouble. Stoves can blow up, walls can catch fire in
the middle of the night, whatever. I think the worst threats
come from the exhaustion and distraction of the parents, these
are the more frequent times when kids get burned, all things
being equal.
Take into account older children as a danger with fire to younger ones,
too. Loose clothes are a problem, treated fabric or not. I buy as
little treated fabric, even for use in my child's clothing, as I
possibly can because I don't like synthetics to begin with anyway.
>As the child gets older, and might be using or helping with the gas
>stove, loose pajamas continue to be a danger. So do all loose
>clothes, for example little girls' dressy dresses (like alt.sewers
>favorite Mousefeathers dresses).
>It seems to me that the sensible thing is to forget about flame
>retardant treatment unless you are making loose pajamas for a toddler
>or older child, and even then consider whether it makes sense to treat
>the pajamas and not the day clothes.
I agree. I make it a point to be extra careful with the flame sources
I can control, no matter what she's wearing. We roll up our sleeves,
change shirts, whatever, to avoid having things catch fire, or tripping
near the stove or on the way to the table. (I have real life cautionary
tales I've been told or witnessed that I tell other people about
children and fire that I live by (which I'm not going to tell), but
that make the consequences of not being very careful ever present to
me.) I would consider loose long hair, for example, as a special
case of loose clothing.
We've strayed well off the topic of sewing *as such*, but the
use anything you sew will be put to is an important issue in how you
make the item. Lifestyle really has an effect on what you sew. For
example, I don't need suits right now so I'm sewing casual, durable
stuff, or stuff I can get messy in (we have a huge garden). Someday,
I'll need the tips I'm collecting from the discussions on contruction
I see here for Grad School Drag and Business Drag.
-babs
--
"Excuse me, while I dance a little jig of despair."
- had...@ics.uci.edu (Ted Hadley)
Grace Sylvan
>Does this mean that this micro-organism may have "infected" the other
>pieces of fabric that were in the same drawer as this cotton? Do I
>have to chuck all of them? This is ghastly (although quick) way of
>decreasing the size of my stash so that I can go shopping again...
>Could this organism have infected other types of fabrics too? Silks,
>for instance?
Well, I suggest taking out your other fabrics and rewashing the ones
stored in the same drawer. And then hang them all out to air on a dry
day, and repack them.... I assume that anything that has the rot will
fall apart in the washer - better before you sew with it then
afterwards!
--
Tigger (Grace Sylvan) Parenting Course July 30+31
tig...@satyr.sylvan.com San Jose CA, email for info
"It seems to me that our large goal is to find the ways to help our
children become humane and strong."
- Dr Haim Ginott quoted by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
Katrina Katz
: I agree with what Bruce has written. I'd just like to add that the term dry-
: rot distinguishes the condition from wet-rot. The latter occurs in wetter
: conditions. Dry-rot, while needing water, can thrive in conditions which are
: not wet enough for wet-rot. So, at the risk of repeating Bruce's advice, the
: drier the storage conditions, the better.
This dry-rot thing...does it take very long to occur and/or does it tend
to happen w/only certain types of fabrics.
I have a bunch of rayon stored in dry boxes in a basement. They've been
there for about 10 mths. Now, I'm afraid to open them up. I think the
basement is relatively dry, but I do live in the very wet Pacific NW.
WorriedKat
--
|\/| ---- _ | REAL men pitch to Bonds!!!
=(oo)=_____ \ |
c___ (_____-/ |
k...@teleport.com |
John Blundell
k...@teleport.com "Katrina Katz" writes (in response to my previous
posting): >
> to happen w/only certain types of fabrics.
>
> I have a bunch of rayon stored in dry boxes in a basement. They've been
> there for about 10 mths. Now, I'm afraid to open them up. I think the
> basement is relatively dry, but I do live in the very wet Pacific NW.
>
I believe you in the US use the term rayon for the material we in the UK refer
to as polyester (can someone confirm this?). This is a man-made fabric and
therefore I do not think it should suffer from fungal attacks like dry-rot. As
Bruce stated in another posting, it attacks cellulose which is plant material
and thus a constituent of natural fabrics from plant origins, e.g. cotton.
My knowledge of dry-rot is limited pretty well to what I have already posted,
and this information was gleaned from past discussions about damage to building
structures. However my understanding is that so long as the stored material is
below a certain threshold of dampness (no, I don't know the figures, or how you
can measure this) fungal attacks cannot take hold. I would have thought that
if your material feels dry to the touch and not at all cold and clammy, you
should be OK.
If dry-rot gets a hold, but not all rot is dry-rot, it can spread very quickly,
but only in the right conditions. However, we should probably be considering
fungus as a class, including, say, mildew. Not all fungi are as destructive as
dry-rot, so by using this term loosely we could be spreading alarm and
desponency unnecessarily. Open up you boxes. It won't bite you. Examine the
condition of your material. Only you can establish if you have a problem. Or
not, which is more likely from what you have written.
If you need to know more, you will need to talk to a biologist or a building
surveyor. The latter would probably also know how to measure and quantify
dampness levels.
My main point is that if you feel the environment is damp then you should
condsider taking preventive measures, primarily finding somewhere that feels
drier.
Truly Donovan
>I believe you in the US use the term rayon for the material we in the UK refer
>to as polyester (can someone confirm this?).
No. Rayon is made from wood cellulose. Polyester is a petrochemical product.
Truly Donovan
Anne Paulson
>I believe you in the US use the term rayon for the material we in
the UK refer
>to as polyester (can someone confirm this?).
Rayon is made from wood cellulose. Polyester is a petrochemical product.
Right. Rayon certainly exists in the UK; maybe it's called viscose?
Rayon is a soft, drapy fabric that is more fragile than cotton; it
has a silk-like hand. It's been around a long time, and was popular
during World War II.
-- Anne
John Blundell
an...@quilty.Stanford.EDU "Anne Paulson" writes:
> Right. Rayon certainly exists in the UK; maybe it's called viscose?
> Rayon is a soft, drapy fabric that is more fragile than cotton; it
> has a silk-like hand. It's been around a long time, and was popular
> during World War II.
>
> -- Anne
Good thinking. I checked the Oxford Encyclopedic Dictionary. Viscose cross-
references rayon, but rayon does _not_ cross-reference viscose.
Yes, viscose is used a great deal here. But you never see the name rayon these
days, but it used to be around some years ago (no, I won't tell you how many).
It probably has something to do with clothes labelling legislation, at a
guess (or has it been used as a trade-name?). I knew rayon was another name
for a material, but I picked the wrong one. Duh.
Having established that rayon is cellulose based, the lady who posted that she
was worried about her rayon stored in the (possibly damp) basement would be
well advised to check in the boxes and review her storage arrangements.
Laurie=Kibbe%Grap...@bangate.compaq.com
Another name for Rayon is VISCOSE. A lot of manufactured clothing label use this term
when listing fabric content.
Bruce T. Brodnax
John Blundell <Jo...@blundell.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>I believe you in the US use the term rayon for the material we in the UK
> refer to as polyester (can someone confirm this?). This is a man-made
> fabric and therefore I do not think it should suffer from fungal
> attacks like dry-rot. As Bruce stated in another posting, it attacks
> cellulose which is plant material and thus a constituent of natural
> fabrics from plant origins, e.g. cotton.
Nope. Polyester is polyester pretty much wherever you go; the name is the
composition - ie linked ester chains... another fine petroleum product
brought to you by dead dinosaurs. ;-) Rayon, OTOH, is made from wood, and
therefore *would* be susceptible to dry rot.
I think the term commonly used in the UK for rayon is "viscose," but I'm
probably wrong.
Ta!
Bruce Brodnax "I'M *NOT* CRAZY! MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE!!!" <tm>
tsbr...@hotmail.com
BEI Design
> Abrams wrote:
<snip>
> black synthetic T-shirt fell apart in my hands just last
> night. Never been wet, stored in an AC'ed room along with 2
> other white cotton T-shirts that have no issues. I posted a
> video on youtube because it's just bizarre.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7JcbfQRbfU&feature=youtu.be
she will not be hanging around awaiting your reply.
That said, it is possible that the black dye you and she are
complaining about contains some iron. In several of my books on
17th, 18th, and 19th century textiles and embroidery, the culprit in
disappearing threads is iron used to create black dyes, the iron
oxidized (rusts), disintegrating the threads and textiles.
See:
http://www.wildcolours.co.uk/html/iron_history.html
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye
"Although logwood was poorly received at first, producing a blue
inferior to that of woad and indigo, it was discovered to produce a
fast black in combination with a ferrous sulfate(copperas) mordant."
Some of the very old, elegant embroidered men's wear which survives
has every brilliant color remaining EXCEPT black. All that remains
of the black thread is the tracks left by the needle. It makes me
weep.
--
Beverly
http://www.ickes.us
BEI Design
<snip>
> survives has every brilliant color remaining EXCEPT black. All
> that remains of the black thread is the tracks left by the
> needle. It makes me weep.
https://www.flickr.com/x/t/0090009/gp/133519324@N05/J4HSTd
Following a description of the allegorical scenes embroidered on a
17th century jacket:
<quote>
The tragedy of this masterpiece of erudition and design is that the
black silk embroidery thread contains iron as a mordant, to achieve
the desired intensity of the dye. Over the years, the iron causes
the silk to disintegrate. The detail indicates the extent of the
loss; only a few motifs are now intact. There are no modern
conservation techniques to prevent this self-destruction, and a fine
dusting of black powder under the jacket indicates its progress.
Photographs taken for [a publication] record the remaining
endangered splenours of this garment.
<end quote>
How sad that is.
--
Beverly
http://www.ickes.us