Finishing Process

Finishing refers to the treatment of fabric to improve its properties. Various techniques that may be applied to narrow fabrics include:

• Basic Finish Treatment or process designed to alter or improve the surface appearance, function or texture of a fabric. Examples include: mercerizing, calendering, glazing, moire, napping, shearing, cropping, embossing, sanding, or beetling.
• Brushing A finishing process for knit or woven fabrics in which brushes or other abrading devices are used to raise a nap on fabrics or create a novelty surface texture.
• Calendering A finishing process to increase the smoothness & luster of fabric. The material is passed between heated rollers under high pressure. Some calender finishes are moire, glazed, friction, chased, or water-marked.
• Combing A process for removing all short fibers and impurities from cotton that has been carded. Combed yarn is superior to carded yarn in that it is more compact and has fewer projecting fibers. The finest cottons are made from combed yarns.
• Dry Finishing Those processing which the cloth is handled in a dry condition. These include perching, measuring, burling, specking, mending, sewing, calendering, brushing, cropping, friction calendering, glazing, napping, shearing, gassing, singeing, or schreinerizing.
• Mercerizing A finishing process used extensively on cotton yarn and cloth consisting essentially of impregnating the material with a cold, strong, sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) solution. The treatment increases the strength and affinity for dyes and, if done under tension, the luster is greatly increased.
• Schreiner Finish The natural luster of many cloths, such as cotton-back sateen, sateen, muslin, linene, linon, and lining is enhanced by a method of milling or pounding called shreinering. The material is subjected to the physical action of a roller, usually made of steel, with a great many fine lines per inch engraved in it. The roller flattens the threads in the cloth and imprints onto the surface a series of ridges, so fine that it is necessary to use a microscope to see the fineness of the work. These very fine lines reflect the rays of light and bring out the appearance by which the cloth is characteristically known. Some of the finishes allied with shreinering are frost-shreinerization, imitation schreinerization, imitation mercerization, bloom finish.