Seam
According to sewing, a seam is a joint where two or further layers of textile, leather, or other accouterments are held together with stitches. Before the innovation of the sewing machine, all sewing was done by hand. ultra modern mass- produced ménage fabrics, sports goods, and ready-to-wear garments are stitched by automated machines, while a combination of hand and machine sewing may be used in home shoemaking, dressmaking, packing, crafts, haute couture, and tailoring. In garment construction, seams are classified by their type (plain, lapped, abutted, or French seam) and position in the finished garment (center back seam, inseam, side seam). Seams are finished using various techniques to prevent raw fabric edges and clean the inside of the garment.
A seam finish is a treatment that protects and cleans the raw edges of a flat seam to prevent raveling, by sewing over the raw edges or binding them in some form of binding. In mass-produced garments, plain seam allowances are usually finished with an overlock stitch using a serger, which trims the seam allowance as it is sewn. Plain seams can also be pressed open, each seam allowance being individually secured with an overlock stitch. Traditional home sewing techniques for finishing plain seams include trimming with pinking shears, overcasting with a zig-zag stitch, and hand or machine overcasting.
Each raw edge of a bound seam is bound in a strip of fabric, lace, or net 'binding' that is folded in half lengthwise. An illustration of the list is a double-fold bias tape recording. The binding fold is wrapped around the raw edge of the seam allowance and stitched, through the entire thickness, holding the bottom of the binding while sewing. Set seams are frequently used on featherlight fabrics, including silk and chiffon, and on unlined garments to produce a neat finish.
Types of seam
i. Plain seams
ii. French seams
iii. Flat or abutted seams
iv. Lapped seams
Seam performance
Seam performance and quality depend on various factors such as seam strength, seam slippage, seam puckering, seam presence, and yarn separation. Sewing needle penetration force and fabric deformation during sewing are effective factors for seam performance. The appearance and performance of the seam depend on the quality of the sewing threads and their dynamic behavior. An essential requirement of any thread is that it must be compatible with the needle size, the various sewing machine settings (stitch speed, thread tension), and the fabric on which it is being sewn. Seam damage can be a serious cost problem, often appearing only after the garment is worn. The most important parameters affecting the tendency of seam damage are fabric construction, chemical treatment of fabric, needle thickness, and sewing machine settings with sewing thread. Fiber content, yarn construction, tightness, and density are important parameters for fabric construction on seam damage. Seam damage caused by needle penetration through the fabric can affect its seam performance. Needle cut or yarn break occurs due to the stiffness of fabric, yarn, and its lack of mobility. Rather than moving and distorting, when the needle penetrates the fabric structure, the yarn breaks or becks.
Seam Quality
Seam quality mainly depends on the strength and appearance of the seam. Seam strength and appearance affect both the functional and aesthetic performance of a garment product and are critical to its scalability and continuity. A good quality seam must have inflexibility and strength with no seaming blights similar to puckering or skipped stitches and the overall appearance of the joining must meet the design demands of the garment product. In addition to considering the quality level of the garment product, judging the quality of the seam also requires consideration of the purpose of the garment product. For some functional garments, such as sportswear, seam strength requirements may be greater than seam appearance requirements, while for some apparel products, such as nightgowns, seam appearance is more important. In the vesture assiduity, overall seam quality is defined by different functional and aesthetic performances that are asked during the end-use of the garments product. Functional performance mainly refers to strength, stiffness, efficiency, elasticity, elongation, flexibility, bending stiffness, abrasion resistance, washing resistance, and resistance to dry cleaning of seams under mechanical stress conditions for a reasonable time.
A defect-free seam is essential for consumer satisfaction while selling garments and helps increase scalability. Different degrees of seam boldness can serve different purposes as design features and influence the look of the garment. In the garments industry, seam boldness is generally used as a crucial dimension to estimate the design oneness of a seam.
Seam quality is controlled by a wide range of factors, including the type and size of sewing thread, fabric, sewing machine speed, needle type, and size, stitch type and density, and operator skill. For better seam quality, this is important to consider. The original fabric characteristics, sewing thread characteristics, and used sewing condition parameters are completely similar. The function and aesthetic performance of the seam line are the results of all these factors. Seam strength refers to the loading needed to break a seam. It measures the strength and stiffness of a seam. Two pieces of woven fabric are joined by a seam and if a tangential force is applied to the seam line, it eventually ruptures at or near the seam line. Each seam has two components, fabric and sewing thread. Therefore, seam strength must result from fabric or thread breakage or, in more cases, both simultaneously. Studies have shown that the load required to rupture a seam is generally less than that required to break a sewn fabric. The ASTM 1683- 04 stitch strength standard is worth emphasizing because of its perfection and ease of processing measures. Hence, this method is widely used by the garment industry to assess seam strength worldwide. Seam slippage is expressed as the transverse ratio of fabric strength to seam strength, which is the ratio of fabric stretch to seam stretch.
Conclusion
Therefore, the overall quality of a seam depends on the requirements imposed by the customers. Good overall seam quality is essential to the longevity of an apparel product, which affects its sell-ability along with consumer satisfaction during wear and care procedures. The garment industry uses various dimensions to evaluate seam quality based on the requirements of a seam from the customer's point of view.
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