Blog Post #3- All About Looks

Unique Trends 

            A few days ago I went on a very interesting field trip to All About Looks, an interior fabric retail store in Lubbock. They are very different from other interior fabric retail stores, especially in West Texas, who are a little late in catching up with the trends of today, or they are taking a little longer to accept the changes in trends. 

            All About Looks sales all the new trends of today, but just because they are new doesn’t mean it is pricey. All About Looks is very reasonable, and works around your budget. They also have their own upholsterer, which is also a cheaper route to go, instead of buying new furniture, reupholster your old furniture. They also give their customers a chance to pick their own style and taste, since the whole process is satisfying your customer.

            All About Looks takes care of your drapery and drapery accessories, bedding, wallpaper, window coverings, area rugs, slip covers, as well as reupholstering done by an experienced upholsterer. They can do just about anything, and they really care about the customer’s safety and they also know what fabrics are needed to do the job, to have a safe and ostentatious interior.

            One of the interesting things that were mentioned on the field trip was that printing on fabric is becoming really popular and it looks really amazing to me, just as if you would buy any other fabric. They showed us an example of a printed fabric and it was of the Beatles, which looked absolutely great, and it amazes you, where technology has taken us.

            I really enjoyed this field trip, especially with all the information that was given, and how nice these people took their time to go over everything they knew. I really appreciated all the left over fabric books that they let us take, which in fact we took to many to count. I recommend this place to anyone who is interested in reupholstering furniture, or who simply just wants the new trends of today.

Blog Post #2- Fiber and Biopolymer Research Institute: Visit 2

Fiber Haze 

            A few days ago I attended a field trip to the Fiber and Biopolymer Research Institute in Lubbock, Texas. Walking into the doors of FBRI, you couldn’t avoid the fiber in the air, and you couldn’t help, but deal with the upcoming of allergies. With FBRI’s motives to change the fiber quality, their goal in doing so, is serving the research needs of manufacturers, cotton breeders and public agencies.

            Once cotton is picked, it has to go through a process, where it is then tested. The cotton is tested in a multiple of ways, so it is one hundred percent positive to be used for any type of fabric. One of the testing processes caught my eye, in which I’m going to go over. Once the fabric has been through the cleaning process and everything other process, it is then brought to the Break Force and Elongation of Textile Fabrics.

            The Break Force and Elongation of Textile Fabrics machine, determines the breaking force and elongation of the fabrics, using a grab sample, and another way of testing the fabric is determining its bursting strength. This machine can be programmed to do skein breaks of yarn and other fiber strengths.

With the different accessories and load cells being used, this type of method is not required for knitting fabrics due to its stretching ability. When testing the strength of knitting fabrics, a machine called the Ball Bursting Strength is used. When dealing with the two methods of strip strength test, the raveled strip test, tests woven fabrics and the cut strip test, test non-woven fabrics, felted fabrics and dipped or coated fabrics. Once they are both set in their lengths of  one inch wide by six inches  in length, the specimen is prepared for warp and filling direction.

The grab test procedure determines the strength of the fabric, but the breaking force of the grab test is not a reflection of the strength of the fabrics. When using the Testometric machine it is set for varying speed depending on what type of fabric is being used. The results can be reported in either inch- pound units, or SI units. The values of the breaking force and elongation of the test specimens are gathered from the computer, which is then interfaced with the testing machine.

The tedious work put into cotton to find the quality and strength is a long process, but with the FBRI’s motive to change the way cotton is processed, brings a positive outlook of what will make of the future.


Fiber and biopolymer research institute. (2011, September 15). Retrieved from http://www.itc.ttu.edu/

Blog Post #1- Fibers

The Start of a Miracle

The brightness, the similarities it shares with cotton, a fiber also known as having its own “ray of light,” was given the name Rayon, the French word for ray.  Rayon was the first manufactured fiber developed which was made from wood or cotton pulp and was first known as artificial silk. Artificial silk was made by Swiss Chemist, George Audemars in 1855, by simply dipping a needle in a liquid solution, mulberry bark pulp and gummy rubber, and a thread was created. The issue during this time period, the process in developing rayon was very slow, and it required precision and skill. In 1905, Courtaulds Fibers produced the first commercial viscose rayon, and the first viscose rayon in the United States was in 1910 by the American Viscose Company.

The purpose of developing rayon was making it a lower-cost alternative to cotton, but the cost of rayon and cotton are about the same. Rayon and cotton share similar characteristics, rayon chemically, just about performs the same as cotton. When it comes to rayon and cotton and their differences, rayon is less stable than cotton when wet because it is most likely to stretch. To prevent rayon from stretching, polynosic rayon was developed, a high-wet-modulus of rayon.

In producing rayon there are three methods in doing so, but the main one of producing rayon is viscose because its cellulosic material is already processed into a liquid and is then forced out into a filament. The second method of rayon is the cuprammonium, and it is extended in a copper solution, but it is only produced in Europe and not the United States because of the cost of up keeping the copper residue from the waste water. The last method of rayon is the Saponified rayon, and it is reverted from acetate through a chemical process so that the fiber looks like rayon, but dyes like acetate.

In producing acetate, the cellulosic fiber is extruded through an acetate solution. Acetate is a different from any other fiber because it requires a special dye. It also has poor abrasion resistance and cannot be made into a wide variety of yarn fabrication. Since acetate is lost cost, light resistant, and dimensionally stable, it is fabulous when used for drapery-lining fabric and for drapery-fabric warp yarns.

The miracle, rayon, is used in a filament form or a long-staple spun form. With rayon’s high level of brightness, it simulates silk. It brings brightness and drape when it is blended with other types of fibers. When using rayon it should not be used as vertical yarn in a drapery because the fabric’s weight will pull and make the panel sag. Rayon’s attributes make it excellent as an accent yarn in fabrics of almost any end-use, from wallcoverings to drapery and upholstery fabrics with fill-effect yarns.