Textile Community Research Articles

A deep multi-instance neural network for dyeing-free inspection of yarn dyeing uniformity

Dyeing evenness is a decisive factor influencing the commercial values of polyester yarn. Thus, the inspection of yarn dyeing uniformity plays a vital role in the textile community. Due to the inefficiency of dyeing process, the traditional dyeing-based inspection methods are both laborious and time-consuming. To improve efficiency, this study attempts to develop a fast dyeing-free method for dyeing uniformity inspection based on imaging spectrometer and multi-instance learning (MIL). The relevant properties of yarn samples are first recorded in the hyperspectral images (HSIs). As the available labels are ambiguous, classifying the collected HSIs has become a MIL problem. Meanwhile, the correlation between the spectral pixels and the sample labels might be sophisticated. It might be difficult for the existing MIL methods to learn such data. In this paper, a deep Fisher score-based multi-instance neural network (DFSNet) is also proposed for classifying the captured HSIs. The DFSNet is able to learn a sophisticated correlation between deep instance features and bag representation. Specifically, a Fisher score-based MIL pooling layer is first developed to convert the instance-level features into bag-level features. The DFSNet is then developed with a ladder structure and the Fisher score-based MIL pooling layer. The proposed dyeing-free method and DFSNet are evaluated using the actual polyester samples. Moreover, the proposed DFSNet and the spectral range of HSI are further analyzed. The experiment results have indicated that the proposed method could achieve satisfactory performance, providing a potential solution to fast dyeing uniformity inspection.

Investigating the Thermo-Oxidative Degradation and Operational Limits for Hybrid AlOX–PET Fabrics Created Via Vapor Phase Infiltration (VPI)

In vapor phase infiltration (VPI), vapor phase metalorganic precursors are diffused into polymers and further reacted with water vapor to form hybrid organic-inorganic materials. Hybrid materials created through VPI have shown utility in industrially relevant applications including membranes for chemical separation, photovoltaics, and catalysis. VPI can be conducted at different temperatures, with each processing temperature resulting in different chemical states that alter the properties of the hybrid material. In this project, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fabrics are infiltrated with a trimethylaluminum (TMA) precursor and co-reacted with water vapor at a range of infiltration temperatures (60-140 ˚C) to create hybrid AlOX - PET fabrics. The purpose of this project is to develop a set of thermal operational limits for these hybrid organic-inorganic materials and translate techniques for thermal characterization from the textile community to the VPI community. Thermo-oxidative degradation for the hybrid fabrics was quantified through changes in degradation temperature and activation energies. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was employed to quantify inorganic loadings (~20 weight percent inorganic), degradation temperatures, and the activation energy for degradation using the Flynn/Wall/Ozawa (FWO) method for decomposition kinetics. Most hybrid fabrics demonstrated lower degradation temperatures than neat PET, except for the fabric infiltrated at 140˚C which had increased degradation temperatures. Activation energies for the first thermal-oxidative degradation event for the 80˚C, 100˚C, and 140˚C fabrics decreased by a range of 62˚C to 84˚C compared to neat PET, while the 120˚C fabric’s activation energy slightly increased by 10˚C. Additionally, a new degradation event occurred for fabrics infiltrated at low temperatures which was explored through FTIR characterization and attributed to structural rearrangements of the inorganic component. Overall, this work demonstrates how VPI process conditions alter both the organic-to-inorganic chemical binding as well as the inorganic cluster structure in these hybrids and how these structural features affect thermophysical operational limits of the material.

Smart Textiles for Healthcare and Sustainability.

At the forefront of the smart textile community, healthcare and sustainability are the two crucial objectives targeted by researchers. The development of such powerful devices has been driven by innovative fabrications of breathable, skin-conformable technologies through the use of functional and programmable materials and device structures. This Perspective focuses on the current smart textiles available in the research field, categorized into personalized healthcare, including diagnostics and therapeutics, and sustainability, including energy harvesting and conservation─personalized thermoregulation. These categories are further broken down into their platform structural technologies and performances. Furthermore, we give a comprehensive overview and highlight a few examples of current studies. Finally, we provide an outlook on these technologies for future researchers to participate. We envision that the next generation of smart textiles will revolutionize wearable technology for healthcare and sustainability.

Traditional handwoven textiles: a case study of thermal comfort of Thailand’s traditional fusible and nonfusible linings

Many Asian countries have made and worn their own traditional textiles; however, due to the rapidly changing influence of western culture, today’s young people prefer to wear modern clothes rather than clothes made using handwoven fabrics. In order to protect and support traditional textile communities/artisans, governments are making great efforts to preserve traditional textile communities. The purpose of this study was to measure the thermal comfort properties of selected handwoven textiles made in Thailand. The results showed no significant difference in terms of thermal comfort between handwoven fabrics combined with linings (fusible and nonfusible). The advantages of the fusible lining include giving support to the handwoven fabric structure, particularly along the seams, and assistance against fabric fraying along cut edges. The results yielded recommendations to weavers of traditional fabrics to optimize the comfort function of the fabrics when worn in traditional Thai garments.

Activism to make and do: The (quiet) politics of textile community groups

Based on qualitative interviews conducted with local guilds, charities and community groups in England, this article highlights the public service older women provide for their communities by volunteering their labour to local textile craft groups. Driven by an ethics of care, they make up for a lack of services formerly provided by the welfare state, such as public transport and mental health support. We mobilise existing literature on ‘quiet activism’ to argue that their community work constitutes a form of political activism, albeit one that stops short of overtly challenging the political system. While highlighting the ways in which older women quietly go about helping their communities, we argue that by being ‘louder’ about the public service they provide, they could help disrupt the narrative of a system that has failed their communities and exploits their free labour.

Design-Driven Approaches to Enable Sustainable Entrepreneurship – Two Case Studies of Regional Textile Communities From the Philippines and the UK

This paper reports on a research project aimed at exploring how designers can activate and sustain entrepreneurial ventures within regional textile communities in the Philippines and the UK. The mindset of consumers, who believe that textiles and fashion should be cheap, has made it difficult to successfully enable regional textile communities. With this in mind, two case studies were undertaken through semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in creative enterprises within regional textile communities in the Philippines and the UK. Findings from the research demonstrate how design-driven approaches to entrepreneurship can lead to reaching an untapped market and securing consumer demand for products and services that are better for people and the planet. The original contribution of the paper lies in the development of a business model meta-canvas, informed by an original conceptual framework that, once successfully adopted, could activate and sustain enterprises in regional textile communities.

Toward closed loop recycling of polyester fabric: Step 1. decolorization using sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate

Although polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers comprise the largest single fiber type used in the global textile community, recycling of dyed PET-based fabric is limited, resulting in the disposal of considerable amounts of PET fabric in landfills every year. Because PET does not readily biodegrade, interest in recycling some or all of the dyed textiles derived from this substrate is of interest. A step toward achieving this vision was investigated in this study, namely the development of an effective decolorization process. In this study, sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate (SFS) was employed to decolorize disperse dyes developed for PET and it was found effective for decolorizing C.I. Disperse Yellow 42, C.I. Disperse Orange 30, and C.I. Disperse Blue 56 in water/acetone media and the process was extended to the decolorization of dyed PET fabric. An optimized combination of treatment time (30 min), water to acetone ratio (1:2), SFS concentration (10 g/L), temperature (100 °C), and liquor ratio (50/1) was found to give good color removal for a range of well-known and widely used disperse dye types. Fabric strength assessments were also investigated and it was found that SFS decolorization had no influence on PET strength, as judged by intrinsic viscosity and bursting strength measurements. It was also found that the acetone component of the decolorization medium could be recovered and reused.

The Future of Textiles: Disruption and Collaboration

The textile field, while not “local” in the geographic sense, is a community: a group of people with a shared language, history, and practices that date back thousands of years. As deeply-rooted as those materials and practices are, textiles is also an area that has historically experienced enormous disruptions due to changing technology and globalization. In the 21st century, we are undergoing something like a second Industrial Revolution. Advances in digital and robotic technologies and shifting labor markets are driving a revolution in where and how things are made. Global climate change, lack of food security for much of the world’s population, and concern about overwhelming quantities of waste and toxic pollution are altering our priorities for land and resource management. These challenges are bringing together the formerly opposed approaches of handcraft and high-tech, organic and artificial in new and unexpected ways. Venturing into the field of textiles today is taking a bold step into a constellation of disciplines that, on the surface, may not appear to have much in common with the history of cloth. But the future of textiles will rely on cross-collaborations in areas of science, medicine, engineering, technology, agriculture, waste management, and other specialties, as well as an understanding of the balance required for environmentally and economically sustainable textile production. The panel will discuss the changes that are taking place in the textile field and will present new and burgeoning areas in the textile industry including commercially viable smart textiles, non-petroleum synthesized fibers, waterless dyeing, alternative manufacturing strategies, and sustainable practices. It will celebrate positive disruptions and cross-disciplinary collaborations that will enlarge and enrich the textile community, and demonstrate once again the resiliency of its social fabric.

Landscapes of Loss: Responses to Altered Landscape in an Ex-Industrial Textile Community

Geographically located at the heart of Carpetvillage in West Yorkshire, Carpetmakers had once been a thriving manufacturer of fine woven carpets since the late 1880s. From my own experience of growing up there in the 1970s, its inhabitants had held a sense of ‘communal being-ness’ through the shared experience of living there and of making carpets. After the factory was closed, Carpet Mill was demolished in 2002, leaving a void where there had once been a handsome Victorian building. Interested in responses to architectural, spatial, and sensuous change in an ex-industrial landscape, this article asks: what were the subjective consequences for the affective ties that hold together an ex-industrial community? Using sensuous ethnographic mobile methods, the study draws on ex-Carpetmakers employees and local residents. The research found nostalgic memories of Carpetmakers as a paternalistic employer operating in a thriving and largely self-sufficient community. Photographs were collected from respondents, which chart a vast number of social clubs and events that offered an important dimension to the ‘way of life’ offered to workers in this ‘company village’. It found that while the importance of works buildings is acknowledged by writers on de-industrialization, missing from their accounts is an embodied analysis of how people interact in situ with landscapes of demolition. Respondents told of the emotional trauma of the demolition process, the effects of spatial change through the erasure of the village’s architectural past and the almost total decline of a community which, for them, no longer holds a sense of place. The decline in the social structures of an industrial community meant that ageing ex-workers and residents found it difficult to generate communal ties with newcomers to the village.

Transforming traditional trade of the hand-woven textile community to digital trade: The case study of Tai Lue group at Toong Mork Village, Chiang Kham, Phayao, Thailand

Transforming traditional trade of the hand-woven textile community to digital trade: The case study of Tai Lue group at Toong Mork Village, Chiang Kham, Phayao, Thailand

An Artisanal History of Kalam?

The dyed, painted, and printed cotton of the Coromandel Coast from South East India are popularly known as Kalamkari, kalam meaning a pen and kari indicating to handwork. The waqai or news reports of the Golconda court from the 1670s mention this term, which is perhaps one of the early archival records of the usage of kalamkari in Deccan. A bamboo pen with a thick grip made of cotton and cotton threads is used for making the painted textiles. While the term “kalam” is generally employed to indicate both painted and printed textile, scholarly studies have not clarified how the pen is crucial in printed textile making. During my fieldwork, I found wooden block makers in the Bandar region of Andhra Pradesh, on the Coromandel Coast, use the term kalam to specify the iron engraving tools for block carving. The artisanal usage of this term expands the meaning of kalam beyond a pen and suggests how artisanal understanding of the histories of practice can offer fresh perspectives on material culture histories and the interconnections between painted and printed textile making. Furthermore, the term is also used by the Bidri metalware artisans from the Deccan region to denote the iron engraving tools for carving, which suggests that dyed textile making in the Coromandel region is also connected to other craft activities in Deccan. This case study, focused on the term kalam, calls for better integration of artisanal insights into the scholarly studies on textiles and material culture. In my paper, I explore the etymological roots of the term kalam in literary works, and its use and transformation as a tool, among the textile practitioners and other artisanal communities in the Deccan and Coromandel regions.

Stitching Together an Arts-based Inquiry with Indigenous Communities in Canada and Chile

Community based research and learning can never be prescribed. The SSHRC funded study entitled, Intergenerational Learning in Indigenous Textile Communities of Practice, illustrated this point in many ways. Although it was conceived as community-based research it was not initially regarded as arts-based, this is what it became. Both the data gathering and research mobilization methods were arts-based. The study provided meaningful lessons in informal Indigenous, and intergenerational, learning within textile communities of practice of Indigenous beaders and weavers from Canada and Chile.

Tanning, Spinning, and Gathering Together: Intergenerational Indigenous Learning in Textile Arts

Intergenerational Learning in Indigenous Textile Communities of Practice was an interdisciplinary arts- and community-based study that inquired into the intergenerational practices of beading and weaving in two Indigenous contexts – one in Southern Chile and the other in Northern Saskatchewan, Canada. The research process involved building relational networks, developing decolonizing methodologies, and working with collaborators, elders, community coordinators, and members of Indigenous textile communities of practice. The research methods, which are a focus of this article, included the use of artifacts to draw out memories and stories of intergenerational learning and to engage the communities in deciding how to share the knowledge generated. Both the data gathering methods and the knowledge mobilization led to arts-based outcomes. The study specifically inquired into how learning is structured and passed on to subsequent generations within communities of practice and the findings provide insights into the way this knowledge is transferred and/or disrupted. Critical reflection on the process highlighted some of the challenges that arose – both with the academic researcher and the community and inside the community.

Fourier-Transform Imaging of Cotton and Botanical and Field Trash Mixtures

Botanical and field cotton trash comingled with Upland cotton lint can greatly reduce the marketability and quality of cotton. Trash found comingled with cotton lint during harvesting, ginning, and processing is of interest to the textile community. In the current study attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopic imaging was employed as an analytical technique to analyze cotton trash. Some benefits of this technique were its non-destructive nature and lack of required sample preparation. The technique used in this study, specifically ATR-FTIR spectroscopic chemical imaging, allows for three-dimensional spectral and spatial data to be obtained. In the current study, cotton in mixtures with botanical and field trash types have been identified spectrally and spatially using ATR-FTIR imaging. Botanical trash types (trash derived from the cotton plant) were evaluated and identified independently from cotton, even though both contained cellulose. The field trash types were easily identified from cotton due to their differences in chemical composition. This study can complement current cotton qualitative studies by adding spectral and spatial information to sample analysis.

The Impact Of Leadership Behavior On The Business Growth Through The Organizational Innovation And Managerial Practices

The main objective of this empirical study is to determine the affect of leadership behavior with the organizational innovative techniques and managerial practices on the businesses’ growth in Pakistan particularly in textile sector. Firstly, the study discusses the relationship between leadership behavior and organizational innovation, between organizational behavior and managerial practices. Furthermore, this relationship is also measured between organizational innovation and business growth and between managerial practices and business growth. Secondly, the study investigates that these relationship are strongly reinforced in the firm with the support of theoretical evidences made but not determined theoretically in the prior literature. Managerial practices take place in textile community for interaction in which organizational cognition is developed and expanded dynamically between the cognitive and behavioral changes. Organizations with greater organizational acquisition and practices create a learning network that will become easier to learn that what they use to learn and to initiate, enabling the firm to preserve its effective and competitive aversion as a textile technological center. Nomothetic research method is applied to test the hypothesis, developed for this study. The research examined a sample of one hundred ten textile firms with sample unit of senior managers, executives, administrative and other-level managers. A research model is formulated for the study and hypotheses are tested with the use of structural equation model. This study purposes that the leaders of firms initiate a transformational role, which facilitate organizational innovation and managerial performances and consequently enhance the business growth especially in textile firms.

Sustainability in the Textile Community through the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy and the Buddhism Concept

Sustainability in the Textile Community through the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy and the Buddhism Concept

Low-Cost Decolorization of High Concentration Acid Dye Bathes using Photo-Fenton Oxidation and Filtration both with and without Biodegradation

In order to develop a low-cost method that effectively cleans acid dye wastewater from small-scale textile industries, a combination of chemical oxidation (photo-Fenton oxidation) and biological treatment (aerobic biodegradation), was employed. High concentration of three acid dyes (5 g/L) were degraded using hydrogen peroxide (6% pharmacy-grade), hydrochloric acid (household), iron (scrap sheets), and sunlight. Filtration (sand and carbon) was used to remove sludge. Results were obtained using UV-visible spectrometry, GC/MS, and ICP along with determination of COD levels. The novel and low-cost photo-Fenton oxidation process showed great promise for the chemical degradation and decolorization of Acid Fast Red, Acid Golden Yellow, and Acid Ananda Blue dyes. It was observed that this method for oxidation is the first to completely decolorize such high concentrations of dye and that biodegradation may not benefit the process after complete oxidation and filtration has occurred. This study, directly compares four different oxidation times (full and partial 1, 2, 3). Obtained results suggested the possibility of fast and easy implementation in rural textile communities as well as a higher potential for commercial applications.

“Social physical exercise?” Football, industrial paternalism, and professionalism in west Dunbartonshire, Scotland, c. 1870–1900

This article examines the interrelationship of sport, community and industry in west Dunbartonshire during the period 1870–1900. During the early years of the Scottish Football Association (SFA)– the 1870s and 1880s – the county's main football clubs were amongst the SFA's most dominant, regularly challenging Glasgow's major clubs for supremacy in the Scottish Cup. These clubs were part of an industrial landscape, based as they were in shipbuilding and textile communities significantly comprised of Irish and Highland Scottish migrant populations. Local industrialists acted as patrons out of a paternalistic desire to mould the message of football. Their attempts were nevertheless undermined by the existence of professionalism in the game, which in turn encouraged an alternate method of social mobility.

'The dangers attending these conditions are evident': Public Health and the Working Environment of Lancashire Textile Communities, c.1870-1939.

This article examines the position of the working environment within public health priorities and as a contributor to the health of a community. Using two Lancashire textile towns (Burnley and Blackburn) as case studies and drawing on a variety of sources, it highlights how, while legislation set the industry parameters for legal enforcement of working conditions, local public health priorities were pivotal in setting codes of practice. The complexities entwined with identifying the working environment as a cause of ill health and with improving it were entangled within the local community health context. In addition, the multiple understandings of Medical Officers of Health surrounding the remit of their responsibilities impacted the local health context. These did not always parallel national regulations. Indeed, it was these local, community specific forces that set the public health agenda, determined its path and the place of the working environment within this.

Velvetweaving today: A worldwide overview

Velvet is a luxury cloth. In Fashion it dresses the Elite. In Interiors, it covers palace walls and upholsters elegant furniture. In every culture throughout its history velvet`s sumptuous surfaces denotes luxury, status, power, privilege and wealth. My humble aim is to reveal the artisan in the art-to comprehend the mastery of weaving techniques, to understand the design principles, to study the everyday practice of the weavers at work. In the few ateliers that still weave silk velvet by hand, I have documented their processes and now want to share this knowledge with the broader textile community in hopes of expanding the appreciation of their art. I approach as a fellow weaver striving to learn the mechanics, the practical aspects that guide the work from initial idea to finished cloth. I leave the difficulties of establishing provenance and other important analyses to my more learned textile historian colleagues.