Right from the beginning of knitting by hand, garments were generated and constructed 'in the round'. Some of the earliest garments known are socks produced in Egypt during the Coptic era of the 4th and 5th centuries AD. These are constructed without seams, of closed loops, and display all the techniques of the integral garment. Some are very complex in the manner in which the heel pouch is generated and in the inclusion of separately knitted toes (digital socks) (Fig. 6.1).
Dorothy K. Burnham in Textile History analyses several socks that form part of the Walter Massey collection in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. She convincingly reasons that such articles were formed using a stitching technique, i.e. single needle knitting. Because they are formed of loops they are truly knitting but do not prove the existence of the two needle hand knitting technique contemporaneously, nor do they shed light on when two needle knitting started.
Medieval caps, gloves, socks and hose were all knitted without seams and to approximate the shape of the human body, allowing for stretching of the fabric to provide exact fit where required. Later the upper body garments knitted by fishermen and their womenfolk on the northern coastlines were also produced without apparent seams.
Michael Pearson in Traditional Knitting repeats the advice given to him by Shetland Island knitters: 'Never ever sew when you can knit. After all most people hate stitching the knitted pieces together. Knitting in the round, together with the grafting of seams, does away with this tiresome chore'.
In terms of the techniques used in sock, glove and hat knitting, the ganzey knitters cheated. Their technique involved knitting the body of the garment in the round from the bottom up. At the yoke the knitting was either split into front and back knitting, or continued in the round to te shoulder, reserving the front neck and the underarm gusset stitches on the way. The back and front shoulders were brought together and knitted off (cast off), and the sleeves were knitted by picking up the gusset stitches and walewise loops down the selvedge around the armhole.
Where the yoke is knitted in the round, the armhole apart from the gusset is cut and stitches picked up rather further in from the edge. Michael Pearson describes such a jumper as a classic Fair Isle pullover, where the extra yarn is generated and stored at the cutting line and subsequently worked into the arm join of the finished garment.
Variations of these techniques include the 'grafting' of shoulder seams, and of sleeves knitted in the round in the conventional way from cuff upwards, to the armhole of the body.
Grafting is a sewing technique in which a row, or course, of loops is generated by stitching two raw edges together. Frances Hinchcliffe, describes the construction of a child's jacket in Crafts magazine, July/ August 1982. The jacket is of 17th century English origin and has been constructed in an almost identical manner to the ganzey tee hr previously described, except that it has no underarm gussets and the sleeves ate 'set-in' but do not have any sleeve head shaping.
Hand knitting became extremely popular towards the end of the 19th century and continued into the early 20th century. It is probably true to say that this period represented the zenith of the craft. During this period Weldon's Practical Needlework magazine was published. This was very influential and in its knitting series contained complete practical instructions to produce any knitted article from Smyrna rugs to knitted garters for ladies. The vast majority of the garments illustrated are integrally knitted and display all the techniques that can he used to generate shape and avoid seams and cutting.
Basic techniques
The basic techniques of integral knitting are:
In machine knitting the term flechage (French for arrow or wedge) has been recently adopted to describe course shaping. It has also been known as the 'beret' principle of knitting. The principle is simple in that the length of the courses being knitted is diminished or extended successively. This usually takes place on one side of the knitting but can occur on either side, both sides, or indeed partial courses can he produced-anywhere on the width being knitted, or the construction can occur within a tube. No loops are lost by casting off or pressing off (dropping); all loops are stored (held) to knit at a later stage. The technique in fact can be alternatively described as knitting in which wales contain differing numbers of loops. Most of the knitting contains the same number of wales throughout.
There are two alternative methods of construction (Fig. 6.2):
(1) The number of loops knitted diminishes in every row. This gives a smoother, unstepped line, but where diminution is by more than one loop small floats occur.
(2) The course diminishes every two rows. No floats occur but the construction has steps, and small holes can result when knitting on all wales is recommenced.
Wale shaping
Wale shaping describes knitting in which the number of wales is reduced or increased internally within a flat piece of fabric or a tube of knitting. The number of courses essentially remains the same (Fig. 6.3).
Tubular knitting
Tubular knitting is created when the constituent thread or threads of the fabric knit spirally. Tubes are particularly useful for clothing the human body as it is made up essentially of cylinders. Tubes feature prominently in integral garments.
Running-on (picking up)
This describes the process whereby knitting is commenced on the edges of previously formed knitted fabric. Mostly the edges involved are selvedges, but one of the common uses of this technique is in fully fashioned knitted panels which are commenced on the course-wise edge of previous knitted ribs.
Running-on describes the machine knitting process of placing course loops or selvedge loops on to the needles of a knitting machine. Portions of knitting can be created perpendicular to previously formed Portions, or with a different number of wales from one another.
Change of stitch type
This process has already been described in cut stitch-shaped knitting. Essentially changes of fabric type between adjacent portions of a garment can generate shape. Such shapes can he horizontally, vertically or otherwise disposed to the garment.
Casting off (knitting off)
This describes the process of structure sealing the last knitted course of a piece of fabric. Up until recently this technique had been limited to hand knitting with pins or hand operated knitting machines, but the Shima Seiki company have introduced a mechanism for their model that performs this function.
Machine knitted integral garments
All the techniques discussed above are available to the machine knitter, but unfortunately not all on the same type of machinery. Some garments have traditionally been produced as essentially integral garments: half hose, hose, berets and gloves. It is only relatively recently that machinery capable of knitting upper body garments in one piece has been introduced.
William Lee's hand frame produced essentially flat fabric, and its component product, hose, was fully fashioned and seamed. However it was capable of knitting three dimensional shapes by course shaping aided by selective pressing, or by wale shaping using loop transfer techniques: It is not known whether early frames used either of these methods, although gloves and hats were produced from early times.
Berets
The traditional beret is an apparently seamless floppy hat made of wool or wool with other animal hairs. The shape varies little between sizes and different makes, the overall concept being bag-like with a close fitting head-band broadening out to a larger diameter before closing shallowly to the crown. The beret resembles in form and shape the medieval caps mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The modern machine knitted version originated in France but has spread world-wide, being particularly Popular as military headwear.
The beret shape is knitted on specialist single needle bed flat machinery, with latch needles selected by a peg drum. Above the needles are mounted sinkers to control the loops during knitting of the complex shapes.
The beret is knitted in plain fabric, its three dimensional shape formed by the consecutive knitting of up to 20 course shaped wedges. commences on the full width required and after two courses the length course diminishes by a fixed number of loops every two courses. When only a predetermined small number of loops arc being formed the cycle, is repeated by knitting on the full width again. With each succeeding wedge the form of the knitting bends round through an arc, but with the head hand side restricted into a cylindrical shape.
After the last course is knitted the fabric is linked to the first course knitted. Both single chain stitch and double chain stitch are used. The blank is then milled, dyed, dried and blocked. The latter process k common in millinery and involves steaming the shape of the hat using a form. Sometimes a brushing is given to the finished form. In recent times a wide range of millinery has been produced using the beret principle combined with thermoplastic fibres. It is difficult to distinguish hats produced by three dimensional knitting from those produced by conventional means, including three dimensional weaving.
Half hose or sock
The sock is now a ubiquitous product world-wide and is worn by both sexes and all ages. Because of the nature of the production machinery the construction varies little, particularly in terms of the generation of shape. Socks very in leg length considerably, from just below the knee (true half hose) to ankle length. The small diameter circular knitting machines that produce socks impose a limitation on their structure in that it is not possible to increase the total size/number of wales of the tube of the sock. This means that there is no facility for wale shaping. The shape of the sock is created by stitch-shaping and course-shaping.
The sock is commenced at the ankle/leg opening with a welt and rib construction designed to grip the leg and prevent the collapse of the sock to a loose bundle around the ankle (often unsuccessful). Most modern socks also contain elastomeric threads in the rib to aid the grip.
After the 1 x 1 or 2 x 2 rib the structure is changed to either plain fabric or a broad rib. This section of the sock is often decorated with jacquard, semi-intarsia, wrap stripe embroidery or structural design. At the level of the heel the instep half of the knitted tube is held while knitting is continued on the heel half reciprocally. The length of the course is reduced by one loop on each side every two courses.
When the length of the course is 1/16th of the circumference of the tube the process is reversed and the length of the course is increased by one loop on each side every two courses, picking up the reserved loops in the process. When the course reaches half the circumference of the tube, reciprocal knitting ceases and the spiral of the tube is recommenced.
Fig.6.4 shows a course by course account of this process, albeit in the flat, with the structure exploded along the turning lines of the heel pouch.
After the knitting of the foot tube the toe is generated in the same manner as the heel pouch. The sock is completed by a single seam joining the two half circumferences of the tube together.
Recently the Shima Seiki flat machines of the type that make gloves have been adapted to produce half hose. The socks produced on the Shima Seiki SPF are entirely seam free and can be produced in conventional form, fully digital (five toes) or partially digital.
Upper and lower body garments
The arguments for and against integrally knitted garments were aired in Chapter 1, where it was pointed out that most of the resistance to the introduction of raw material and labour saving garment forms lay in the socio-economic objections rather than the technical.
There are technical limitations to what can be achieved; not every garment type/shape currently produced by cutting and sewing can be achieved in three dimensional knitting. But within the known possibilities only the surface has been scratched so far.
Much work has been carried out by the manufacturers of flat knitting machines into the three dimensional generation of garments. Here mention must be made of work carried out in the early 1980s by Michael
Dicks, Michael O'Brien and others at the Dubied Knitting Machinery Co in Leicester, and of the work currently being undertaken by the Shima Seiki Co.
To illustrate some of these possibilities several garments are discussed here and some historical background given.
Garment 1
The first garment is an intermediate one, intermediate that is between fully fashioned and integral. It certainly saves cutting waste and reduces sewing labour but is knitted in a flat form.
The garment is a short ladies jacket knitted in a half cardigan rib construction with fronts and back knitted together and with neck revers and armholes shaped by fashioning (Fig. 6.5). The garment is a development design of the Shima Seiki Company and is produced on a seven gauge model SEC 202 FF M type. I do not propose to examine the details of the machine knitting program that achieved this article, although a brief description of the techniques involved is appropriate.
To fully fashion on a V-bed flat machine, loops are transferred selectively at the extremities of the knitting from the bed they have been knitted on to the needles on the opposite bed. The beds then move laterally to one another (racking) and the loops are transferred back, this time to different needles, either reducing or expanding the knitting width. Fig. 6.6 illustrates this figuratively.
Such movements are simple when the fabric is being knitted on one bed only but become more difficult when knitting rib constructions on both beds because there are no empty needles, other than the single ones at the outer edge of the knitting width, to which to transfer. The usual way of overcoming this problem is by knitting on only alternate needles on each bed, thus freeing needles to be used as temporary parking places for loops. This is known as half gauging. On simple fully fashioned rib garments, often only the outer three or four needles are arranged in this way, but on this garment with its internal armhole fashioning the whole knitting width is half gauged.
The only waste generated with this garment is the roving courses at the top of the shoulder portions. The only seaming required is:
(1) overlocking and taping of the shoulders;
(2) sealing of the back neck with double chain stitch;
(3) button holding and button sewing.
Further development of this garment could involve auto casting off of part or all of the shoulder and back neck on completion; and the retention of the loops of the underarm shaping while continuing to knit the front and back yokes, with subsequent knitting of sleeves. Such sleeves would require partial seaming of the head into the armhole and a top sleeve seam. Development into a raglan could eliminate the head seam. I will leave the reader to imagine the innumerable possibilities that this particular garment idea presents.
Garment 2
This garment was the invention of the late Harry Wignall, Head of the department the of Textile Technology, Leicester Polytechnic. The concept is very simple, that of knitting a tube of fabric with part way along it two opposing heel type pouches. The fabric is cut in a wale line from one end of the tube to the centre of each pouch, the cut portions lowered to a position at 90° to the tube, and the basic shape of a raglan sleeved jumper is created (Fig. 6.7).
Dorothy K. Burnham in Textile History analyses several socks that form part of the Walter Massey collection in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. She convincingly reasons that such articles were formed using a stitching technique, i.e. single needle knitting. Because they are formed of loops they are truly knitting but do not prove the existence of the two needle hand knitting technique contemporaneously, nor do they shed light on when two needle knitting started.
Medieval caps, gloves, socks and hose were all knitted without seams and to approximate the shape of the human body, allowing for stretching of the fabric to provide exact fit where required. Later the upper body garments knitted by fishermen and their womenfolk on the northern coastlines were also produced without apparent seams.
Michael Pearson in Traditional Knitting repeats the advice given to him by Shetland Island knitters: 'Never ever sew when you can knit. After all most people hate stitching the knitted pieces together. Knitting in the round, together with the grafting of seams, does away with this tiresome chore'.
In terms of the techniques used in sock, glove and hat knitting, the ganzey knitters cheated. Their technique involved knitting the body of the garment in the round from the bottom up. At the yoke the knitting was either split into front and back knitting, or continued in the round to te shoulder, reserving the front neck and the underarm gusset stitches on the way. The back and front shoulders were brought together and knitted off (cast off), and the sleeves were knitted by picking up the gusset stitches and walewise loops down the selvedge around the armhole.
Where the yoke is knitted in the round, the armhole apart from the gusset is cut and stitches picked up rather further in from the edge. Michael Pearson describes such a jumper as a classic Fair Isle pullover, where the extra yarn is generated and stored at the cutting line and subsequently worked into the arm join of the finished garment.
Variations of these techniques include the 'grafting' of shoulder seams, and of sleeves knitted in the round in the conventional way from cuff upwards, to the armhole of the body.
Grafting is a sewing technique in which a row, or course, of loops is generated by stitching two raw edges together. Frances Hinchcliffe, describes the construction of a child's jacket in Crafts magazine, July/ August 1982. The jacket is of 17th century English origin and has been constructed in an almost identical manner to the ganzey tee hr previously described, except that it has no underarm gussets and the sleeves ate 'set-in' but do not have any sleeve head shaping.
Hand knitting became extremely popular towards the end of the 19th century and continued into the early 20th century. It is probably true to say that this period represented the zenith of the craft. During this period Weldon's Practical Needlework magazine was published. This was very influential and in its knitting series contained complete practical instructions to produce any knitted article from Smyrna rugs to knitted garters for ladies. The vast majority of the garments illustrated are integrally knitted and display all the techniques that can he used to generate shape and avoid seams and cutting.
Basic techniques
The basic techniques of integral knitting are:
- course shaping (flechage);
- wale shaping;
- tubular knitting;
- running-on;
- change of stitch type;
- casting off.
In machine knitting the term flechage (French for arrow or wedge) has been recently adopted to describe course shaping. It has also been known as the 'beret' principle of knitting. The principle is simple in that the length of the courses being knitted is diminished or extended successively. This usually takes place on one side of the knitting but can occur on either side, both sides, or indeed partial courses can he produced-anywhere on the width being knitted, or the construction can occur within a tube. No loops are lost by casting off or pressing off (dropping); all loops are stored (held) to knit at a later stage. The technique in fact can be alternatively described as knitting in which wales contain differing numbers of loops. Most of the knitting contains the same number of wales throughout.
There are two alternative methods of construction (Fig. 6.2):
(1) The number of loops knitted diminishes in every row. This gives a smoother, unstepped line, but where diminution is by more than one loop small floats occur.
(2) The course diminishes every two rows. No floats occur but the construction has steps, and small holes can result when knitting on all wales is recommenced.
Wale shaping
Wale shaping describes knitting in which the number of wales is reduced or increased internally within a flat piece of fabric or a tube of knitting. The number of courses essentially remains the same (Fig. 6.3).
Tubular knitting
Tubular knitting is created when the constituent thread or threads of the fabric knit spirally. Tubes are particularly useful for clothing the human body as it is made up essentially of cylinders. Tubes feature prominently in integral garments.
Running-on (picking up)
This describes the process whereby knitting is commenced on the edges of previously formed knitted fabric. Mostly the edges involved are selvedges, but one of the common uses of this technique is in fully fashioned knitted panels which are commenced on the course-wise edge of previous knitted ribs.
Running-on describes the machine knitting process of placing course loops or selvedge loops on to the needles of a knitting machine. Portions of knitting can be created perpendicular to previously formed Portions, or with a different number of wales from one another.
Change of stitch type
This process has already been described in cut stitch-shaped knitting. Essentially changes of fabric type between adjacent portions of a garment can generate shape. Such shapes can he horizontally, vertically or otherwise disposed to the garment.
Casting off (knitting off)
This describes the process of structure sealing the last knitted course of a piece of fabric. Up until recently this technique had been limited to hand knitting with pins or hand operated knitting machines, but the Shima Seiki company have introduced a mechanism for their model that performs this function.
Machine knitted integral garments
All the techniques discussed above are available to the machine knitter, but unfortunately not all on the same type of machinery. Some garments have traditionally been produced as essentially integral garments: half hose, hose, berets and gloves. It is only relatively recently that machinery capable of knitting upper body garments in one piece has been introduced.
William Lee's hand frame produced essentially flat fabric, and its component product, hose, was fully fashioned and seamed. However it was capable of knitting three dimensional shapes by course shaping aided by selective pressing, or by wale shaping using loop transfer techniques: It is not known whether early frames used either of these methods, although gloves and hats were produced from early times.
Berets
The traditional beret is an apparently seamless floppy hat made of wool or wool with other animal hairs. The shape varies little between sizes and different makes, the overall concept being bag-like with a close fitting head-band broadening out to a larger diameter before closing shallowly to the crown. The beret resembles in form and shape the medieval caps mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The modern machine knitted version originated in France but has spread world-wide, being particularly Popular as military headwear.
The beret shape is knitted on specialist single needle bed flat machinery, with latch needles selected by a peg drum. Above the needles are mounted sinkers to control the loops during knitting of the complex shapes.
The beret is knitted in plain fabric, its three dimensional shape formed by the consecutive knitting of up to 20 course shaped wedges. commences on the full width required and after two courses the length course diminishes by a fixed number of loops every two courses. When only a predetermined small number of loops arc being formed the cycle, is repeated by knitting on the full width again. With each succeeding wedge the form of the knitting bends round through an arc, but with the head hand side restricted into a cylindrical shape.
After the last course is knitted the fabric is linked to the first course knitted. Both single chain stitch and double chain stitch are used. The blank is then milled, dyed, dried and blocked. The latter process k common in millinery and involves steaming the shape of the hat using a form. Sometimes a brushing is given to the finished form. In recent times a wide range of millinery has been produced using the beret principle combined with thermoplastic fibres. It is difficult to distinguish hats produced by three dimensional knitting from those produced by conventional means, including three dimensional weaving.
Half hose or sock
The sock is now a ubiquitous product world-wide and is worn by both sexes and all ages. Because of the nature of the production machinery the construction varies little, particularly in terms of the generation of shape. Socks very in leg length considerably, from just below the knee (true half hose) to ankle length. The small diameter circular knitting machines that produce socks impose a limitation on their structure in that it is not possible to increase the total size/number of wales of the tube of the sock. This means that there is no facility for wale shaping. The shape of the sock is created by stitch-shaping and course-shaping.
The sock is commenced at the ankle/leg opening with a welt and rib construction designed to grip the leg and prevent the collapse of the sock to a loose bundle around the ankle (often unsuccessful). Most modern socks also contain elastomeric threads in the rib to aid the grip.
After the 1 x 1 or 2 x 2 rib the structure is changed to either plain fabric or a broad rib. This section of the sock is often decorated with jacquard, semi-intarsia, wrap stripe embroidery or structural design. At the level of the heel the instep half of the knitted tube is held while knitting is continued on the heel half reciprocally. The length of the course is reduced by one loop on each side every two courses.
When the length of the course is 1/16th of the circumference of the tube the process is reversed and the length of the course is increased by one loop on each side every two courses, picking up the reserved loops in the process. When the course reaches half the circumference of the tube, reciprocal knitting ceases and the spiral of the tube is recommenced.
Fig.6.4 shows a course by course account of this process, albeit in the flat, with the structure exploded along the turning lines of the heel pouch.
After the knitting of the foot tube the toe is generated in the same manner as the heel pouch. The sock is completed by a single seam joining the two half circumferences of the tube together.
Recently the Shima Seiki flat machines of the type that make gloves have been adapted to produce half hose. The socks produced on the Shima Seiki SPF are entirely seam free and can be produced in conventional form, fully digital (five toes) or partially digital.
Upper and lower body garments
The arguments for and against integrally knitted garments were aired in Chapter 1, where it was pointed out that most of the resistance to the introduction of raw material and labour saving garment forms lay in the socio-economic objections rather than the technical.
There are technical limitations to what can be achieved; not every garment type/shape currently produced by cutting and sewing can be achieved in three dimensional knitting. But within the known possibilities only the surface has been scratched so far.
Much work has been carried out by the manufacturers of flat knitting machines into the three dimensional generation of garments. Here mention must be made of work carried out in the early 1980s by Michael
Dicks, Michael O'Brien and others at the Dubied Knitting Machinery Co in Leicester, and of the work currently being undertaken by the Shima Seiki Co.
To illustrate some of these possibilities several garments are discussed here and some historical background given.
Garment 1
The first garment is an intermediate one, intermediate that is between fully fashioned and integral. It certainly saves cutting waste and reduces sewing labour but is knitted in a flat form.
The garment is a short ladies jacket knitted in a half cardigan rib construction with fronts and back knitted together and with neck revers and armholes shaped by fashioning (Fig. 6.5). The garment is a development design of the Shima Seiki Company and is produced on a seven gauge model SEC 202 FF M type. I do not propose to examine the details of the machine knitting program that achieved this article, although a brief description of the techniques involved is appropriate.
To fully fashion on a V-bed flat machine, loops are transferred selectively at the extremities of the knitting from the bed they have been knitted on to the needles on the opposite bed. The beds then move laterally to one another (racking) and the loops are transferred back, this time to different needles, either reducing or expanding the knitting width. Fig. 6.6 illustrates this figuratively.
Such movements are simple when the fabric is being knitted on one bed only but become more difficult when knitting rib constructions on both beds because there are no empty needles, other than the single ones at the outer edge of the knitting width, to which to transfer. The usual way of overcoming this problem is by knitting on only alternate needles on each bed, thus freeing needles to be used as temporary parking places for loops. This is known as half gauging. On simple fully fashioned rib garments, often only the outer three or four needles are arranged in this way, but on this garment with its internal armhole fashioning the whole knitting width is half gauged.
The only waste generated with this garment is the roving courses at the top of the shoulder portions. The only seaming required is:
(1) overlocking and taping of the shoulders;
(2) sealing of the back neck with double chain stitch;
(3) button holding and button sewing.
Further development of this garment could involve auto casting off of part or all of the shoulder and back neck on completion; and the retention of the loops of the underarm shaping while continuing to knit the front and back yokes, with subsequent knitting of sleeves. Such sleeves would require partial seaming of the head into the armhole and a top sleeve seam. Development into a raglan could eliminate the head seam. I will leave the reader to imagine the innumerable possibilities that this particular garment idea presents.
Garment 2
This garment was the invention of the late Harry Wignall, Head of the department the of Textile Technology, Leicester Polytechnic. The concept is very simple, that of knitting a tube of fabric with part way along it two opposing heel type pouches. The fabric is cut in a wale line from one end of the tube to the centre of each pouch, the cut portions lowered to a position at 90° to the tube, and the basic shape of a raglan sleeved jumper is created (Fig. 6.7).
The subsequent shape requires cutting at the neck and top arm with top arm/shoulder seaming, neck finishing and rib attachments at waist and cuff. There is some saving of cutting waste with this garment but the extra seaming operations probably equal, if not exceed, those involved in a conventional cut garment of this type.
Bentley Engineering constructed a machine to this pattern and several were sold for the production of school jumpers. It is rather a dead end concept in that little if any pattern and shape development is possible; nevertheless it can be argued that this is an important link in the chain of integral garment ideas in that it uses course shaping in a very novel way and while it shows that integral garments are possible on circular machinery it is not a versatile route.
Garment 3
This concept is one of the most promising methods of knitting integral garments on V-bed flat machines. The principle is relatively simple: tubes are knitted simultaneously for the body and sleeves of a garment. These
are spaced appropriately on the needle bed: sleeve—body—sleeve (Fig.6.8) the knitting of the body and sleeves progresses these needles are introduced in the sleeve sections one at a time to form the underarm widenings. Eventually the sleeves meet with three tubes is merged into one.
Narrowing now commences, involving the sections of knitting f associated with the sleeve tubes. The whole of the sleeve sections are moved over progressively to form a raglan sleeve head on each side of the body. Eventually the diameter of the tube diminishes to neck size. It is possible to shape the front neck during the knitting process, retaining the loops for subsequent knitting of a neck rib when the ac neck has been pressed off. Such a collar requires turning in at a fold and attaching to the back neck and inside front neck with mock linking.
Waistbands and cuffs can be formed by turning welts with Hind overlock or linking seams, or ribs can be overlocked or linked on. it possible to preform ribs on the knitting machine by knitting first the front ribs on alternate needles, i.e. half gauged, then transferring loops from the back bed to the front where they are stored on say odd needles while the back rib is knitted on even needles and eventually transferred to the hack bed. When both back and front ribs have been knitted, the tubular knitting is commenced.
It is not necessary to commence knitting body and sleeves at the same time; body and sleeves are rarely of the same length. It has been suggested that ribs be pre-formed and run on to the needles of machines in much the same way as ribs on to a fully fashioned machine using a point bar. While this presents manipulative difficulties with the current designs of flat machines, it would enable a wider range of rib types to be attached to the garment.
Because of the manner of fashioning by loop transference between beds, already described for Garment 1, garments of this type are essentially produced on half gauged machine set-outs. There is another machine type, however, where this is potentially unnecessary. Such machines have a loop transfer bar or bars situated above the needles, capable of lifting loops off the needles, racking, and replacing them in a changed position. The machine builders ABRIL make such a machine currently and several builders, including Stoll and Universal, have previously made such machinery. It is not known whether they actually used them for seamless garments but the potential is there for future development.
The production of tubular seamless garments was patented in the name of Robinson and Chell for Courtaulds Ltd in 1965. Courtaulds themselves did not use this idea to produce commercial garments and the patent inhibited others from developing the concept.
While the garments are basically knitted in plain fabric it is possible to decorate the fabric with a wide range of structural and colour possibilities using knitting, missing, tucking and striping as well as intarsia. The garment described has raglan sleeves but it is possible to generate a wide range of different sleeve heads of the set-in type.
While this type of garment can be made on present day machinery, it would probably be best exploited if special machinery were designed to iron out some of the problems that arise.
Panty-hose
Panty-hose have been the subject of several efforts to produce integrally knitted versions. The Pretty Polly 'Banana' type (Fig. 6.9) was an early introduction (1960s) of moderate success. The garment was knitted as a single tube from toe to toe, with the centre sections of the tube forming the panty part of the garment. A split was made in the widened panty section on one side along a single wale. This slit opened out to form the waistband but had to be finished with an elastic insertion seam. The toes were of the 'closed' variety and so required no seaming. Because of the limitations of the size of the panty section satisfactory fit could only be achieved on smaller sizes, and the idea never became fully exploited.
A more recent development by the Italian machine builder Saveo-Matec produces a whole panty hose in a novel manner (Fig. 6.10). Two open top, small diameter hose machine cylinders are mounted on the same machine frame. The upper cylinder is inverted over the lower one, in a similar configuration to a double cylinder 1/2 hose machine. Both cylinders knit simultaneously, each producing one leg of the panty hose. Knitting commences at the waistband of the panty portion, each cylinder knitting an elastomeric turned welt. The two tubes, one inside the other, are slit at the position down a single wale, starting from the first course. On either side of the slit, selected needles share the yarn on some of the courses, splicing the two tubes together and forming a 'knit seam'. This splicing continues for a small number of courses after the slitting, to form the lower extremity of the seam. The legs. are knitted one inside the other and have open toes that are sealed with an Overlock seam as a post-knitting operation. All sizes are possible on this most unusual garment, which must be turned to draw the inner leg out of the outer.
For a much fuller account of the knitting process, and the ultra/ assembler machine read Modig (1988).