3 Ways to Distinguish between Knitted and Woven Fabrics

There are all kinds of fabrics on the market, but when it comes to wearable fabrics, the most common types are knitted and woven fabrics. Most fabrics are named after the way they are made, including knitted and woven fabrics.

If you are working with fabrics for the first time, you may find it difficult to distinguish knitted fabrics from woven fabrics.In this article, we will show you 3 quick ways to easily tell knitted fabric from woven fabric.

 

1, Distinguishing knitted and woven fabrics by their appearance

As mentioned earlier, fabrics are usually named after the manufacturing process used to produce them. The process used to produce knitted fabrics is fundamentally different from woven fabrics, and this difference in production can usually be seen just by looking at the fabrics.

Woven Fabrics

To understand the process of making woven fabrics, one only has to remember the process used to make clothing fabrics hundreds of years ago. Fabrics are made by weaving and layering threads. Imagine a goal net or a multi-layered tennis racket net, but criss-cross these patterns and you get a woven fabric!

Knitted Fabrics

It is important to know that knitted fabrics are divided into weft and warp knitted. Although both types of fabrics are made from interwoven yarns, they differ slightly in appearance.

Weft Knitted Fabrics

To get an idea of the weft method, just think of hand-knitted jumpers, where the material is made by weaving yarns around itself. So if you look at a woven knit, the pattern of the fabric has a very distinct V-shape.

Warp Knitted Fabrics

Warp knitted fabric are also made by weaving yarns or threads around themselves, but the pattern is a little more complicated. The V-shape of the yarns is not so obvious, but the patterns are also stripe-like.

To better distinguish weft from warp knitted fabrics, read the following method for distinguishing fabrics!

 

2, Distinguishing between knitted and woven fabrics bseparating the threads

If the fabric you are considering is machine weaved, it is much more difficult to distinguish knitted fabric from woven fabric because the texture and pattern are altered by these processes. To distinguish them, you can use a second method: Pull the threads.

Try pulling the threads on one edge of the fabric and observe the weave pattern.

Woven Fabrics

For woven fabrics, you can simply pull the threads or separate them from the edge of the fabric. Normally this is not even necessary with woven fabrics. This is because the threads come off very easily at the edges of the fabric. You can pull the threads across the entire width and length of the fabric. If you see loose threads at the edge of the fabric, you can quickly determine if the fabric is woven.

Weft Knitted Fabric

With weft knitted fabric, you can also remove the threads at the edges, but this is not as easy as separating woven fabrics. This is because the weft thread is interwoven with other threads. Sometimes the thread is blocked by another thread when it is separated. Pulling out the whole thread can take some time. You can only pull the thread from the width or length side of the fabric.

Warp Knitted Fabric

There is absolutely no way to pull out the threads for warp knitted fabrics. Due to the relatively complex production process, a special tool is required to remove the threads. Thread removal by hand is impossible!

 

3, Pulling the fabric and pay attention tthe elasticity

In general, woven fabrics are less stretchy than knitted fabrics. If the fabrics are not made of elastic fibres, a comparative test of elasticity is quite easy, as the elasticity of the knitted fabric stands out even more.

Woven Fabrics

The yarns of fabrics are tightly woven and interwoven. If the yarns that make up the fabric are not elastic, the elasticity of the material will be almost zero. It will be quite difficult to stretch them.

Weft Knitted Fabric

Because the threads are interwoven together in the weft knitted fabric, there is a large space between the threads. This allows the fabric to expand and contract easily. So when elastic threads are not used, weft knit fabrics will be more stretchy than woven fabrics.

Warp Knitted Fabrics

If the warp knitted fabric is made with elastic fibres, it will stretch. However, if the warp knitted fabric does not contain elastic fibres, it will not stretch like woven fabric.

Still Confused? Huasheng provides free fabric analysis services including fabric composition, fabric weight, and knitting structure. Please feel free to send us the sample.


Post time: Apr-12-2022