What Are the Common Problems in the Finishing of Baby Sweaters?

Wool is a natural protein fiber. It is favored by mothers for its fluffy, plump, and warm characteristics. The finishing process of wool sweaters has been greatly developed since the late 1990s, especially the application of mercerized shrink-proof technology for wool garments, which has significantly improved the quality and added value of wool sweaters. 

With the development of the economy and the improvement of people's living standards, the color and composition of baby sweaters have changed in recent years; the trend of diversification of styles and accessories is obvious. It no longer pursues the traditional requirements of keeping warm, machine washable, shrink-proof, and smooth to the touch, but pays more attention to colorful, individual style, health and environmental protection, easy care, multi-functional, and more suitable for children. These requirements bring new opportunities and challenges to sweater dyeing and finishing. At the same time, the above-mentioned new requirements have also added more diverse and complex issues to mothers in the post-organization process.

At present, the chlorinated shrink-proof finishing technology of baby's wool clothing is the best method for shrink-proof effect. The technology is mature, the control is simple, and the cost is the lowest. The finished product can meet daily machine washing, and can also obtain very good super softness and hand feeling, so it is widely used. 

In this process, the color consistency before and after the sweater processing is the most critical factor to examine the processing quality. However, due to the difference in the type of fiber material, the type of dyes used, and the color fastness, the problem of color and fastness changes before and after processing is very common. Such changes directly affect the designer's design goals and the overall quality of the sweater.

Fading is the most common phenomenon in the processing of heavy-colored sweaters, especially dark colors (black, dark navy, red, etc.). If there is only a small amount of floating color fading, it generally does not affect the quality of the sweater. But in the past two years, this phenomenon has become more and more common and serious. From the random inspection results of our processed clothes, most of them are caused by poor color fastness, incomplete bleaching and washing, and poor chlorine resistance of dyes.

With the fashionable design of sweater styles, jacquard fabrics have occupied the mainstream of the market, with a wide variety of jacquard colors and large color contrast. In this case, staining and color matching due to severe fading will increase.

The reasons are: 

①The chlorinated anti-shrinkage process itself turns yellow (the lighter the color, the more obvious); 

②The alkali treatment in the mercerizing process; 

③The steam after printing will turn the wool yellow; The whitening agent is not resistant to chlorine or discoloration during processing;

The reasons are: 

①In order to improve the color fastness, inappropriate reactive dyes were selected. The color fastness of the yarn is acceptable when it leaves the factory. However, because the selected dye has not been screened for chlorine resistance, it will appear after chlorination and anti-shrinkage treatment. The fastness decreases or changes color; 

②Contains a large amount of cellulose fibers (more than 10% discoloration is obvious), because the reactive dyes used are not resistant to chlorine;

The reason: Chlorinated discoloration of non-wool accessories, such as zippers and buttons that are not resistant to chemical corrosion or residual chemical additives.

To sum up, fading, staining, and discoloration are independent of each other and have a close internal connection. But color fastness is the main premise, which is directly related to the ease of finishing and processing quality. If the color fastness is not high, it will bring a great difficulty to the finishing, which directly affects the overall quality of the sweater and the baby's wearing comfort.

The above describes in detail the common problems in the post-finishing of baby sweaters. If you want to know more, please contact us.

Camiz is a professional custom children's knitwear manufacturer. We have a modern professional children's knitwear processing factory, mainly focusing on children's clothing manufacturing for many years. We offer children's clothing such as baby, boy and girl jumpsuits, baby suits and sweaters. In addition, we also provide accessories such as hats, headbands, blankets, socks, etc.