Garments using new fabric unveiled

Coimbatore, Aug 26: THE city based PSG College of Technology has introduced “breezy silk”, said to be first of its kind in the world, under a Swiss aided collaborative project.

Addressing a press conference here last night, Prof Ramachandran, principal investigator of the project, said the “air-textured silk garments”, made of natural silk has an enhanced excellent handle, aesthetic and comfort characteristics.

The project, ‘Seri 2000’ was a collaborative sericulture development programme being jointly organised by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and ministry of textiles to increase productivity, quality and sustainability with an emphasis on the post cocoon sector and with demand-side approach.

He said air-jet texturisation was more suitable for processing non-thermo plastic filaments like silk. Draw, false twist, edge crimping, gear crimping, knit-de-knit were the other techniques of texturing filaments, he said.

Under the project, bleached and dyed silk filaments of 50 Denier (D), 100D, 150D And 200D were textured, Mr Ramachandran said adding that 118 different trials by varying process parameters by the Institute and textured silk filaments were produced and woven, knitted fabrics developed by the Institute.

About 40 varieties of popular varieties like T-shirt, full length trousers, women’s full sleeve jacket with notch collar, sleeveless top, asymmetrical jacket, sarees and shawl have been produced using this techniques, Mr Ramachandran said.

All the developed garments were found to have unique surface structure, subdued lustre, warmer hand, better wicking behaviour, better crimp contraction, rich bulk, spun like feel and a good loop stability, he said.

The process was patented under “a process for manufacturing air-texturised silk filament and a system for manufacturing the texturised silk filament”, Mr Ramachandran added.

SERI 2000 project was launched in 1997 as a five year programme, he said.

Union Textiles Secretary Anil Kumar, who launched the products, asked the silk textile industry to concentrate more on product development to increase the value of exports. He appealed to the industry to make use of the resource centres, like NIFT, to create newer designs.

(PTI).