Category Chemistry

WHERE DO FIBRES FOR TEXTILES COME FROM?

At one time, fibres for textiles came from either plants or animals. The former included cotton from the cotton plant and linen from flax, but also coarser fibres for rope, sacking and matting, such as hemp, jute, sisal and even coconut fibres. Animal-based fibres have been spun from the coats of sheep, goats, camels, llamas and, by real enthusiasts, dogs! Nowadays, there are also artificial fibres, spun from mixtures of chemicals. By mixing different fibres together, it is possible to make fabrics for every purpose.

Fiber is a hair-like strand of material. It is flexible and can be spun or twisted for weaving, braiding, knitting, crocheting, etc. to make desired products. Fibers can be obtained in natural form from plants and animals as well as in synthetic form. Man-made or synthetic fibers are either made up of chemicals or by processing natural fibers to create new fiber structures/properties.

Fiber is the fundamental component required for making textile yarns and fabrics. There are two types – natural and synthetic. Natural fibers come from animals (sheep, goats, camelids, etc.) or vegetable-based fibers (cotton, flax, linen, and other plant fibers). Mineral fibers (asbestos, etc) are also classified as a natural fiber.

Synthetic fibers are man-made and manufactured from synthetic chemicals – (byproducts of the petrochemical industries) – nylon, polyester, acetates.The characteristics of fibers directly affect the properties of the fabric it is woven into.

The history of fibers is as old as human civilization. Traces of natural fibers have been located to ancient civilizations all over the globe. For many thousand years, the usage of fiber was limited by natural fibers such as flax, cotton, silk, wool and plant fibers for different applications.

Fibers can be divided into natural fibers and man-made or chemical fibers. Flax is considered to be the oldest and the most used natural fiber since ancient times.A unit of matter which is capable of being spun into a yarn or made into a fabric by bonding or by interlacing in a variety of methods including weaving, knitting, braiding, felting, twisting, or webbing, and which is the basic structural element of textile products.

It is the smallest textile component which is a microscopic hair-like substance that may be man-made or natural.They have length at least hundred times to that of their diameter or width.

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HOW IS A HARDBACK BOOK COVER MADE?

Glueing, sewing or stapling pages together and placing them within a cover is called binding. Several pieces of card and paper are required to bind a hardback book. It is also possible to add bookmark ribbons and little pieces of fabric called headbands at the top and bottom of the spine (back) of the book.

A hardcover or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder’s board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occasionally leather). It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened. Following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk.

Hardcover books are often printed on acid-free paper, and they are much more durable than paperbacks, which have flexible, easily damaged paper covers. Hardcover books are marginally more costly to manufacture. Hardcovers are frequently protected by artistic dust jackets, but a “jacketless” alternative has increased in popularity: these “paper-over-board” or “jacketless hardcover” bindings forgo the dust jacket in favor of printing the cover design directly onto the board binding.

Hardcovers typically consist of a page block, two boards, and a cloth or heavy paper covering. The pages are sewn together and glued onto a flexible spine between the boards, and it too is covered by the cloth. A paper wrapper, or dust jacket, is usually put over the binding, folding over each horizontal end of the boards. Dust jackets serve to protect the underlying cover from wear. On the folded part, or flap, over the front cover is generally a blurb, or a summary of the book. The back flap is where the biography of the author can be found. Reviews are often placed on the back of the jacket. Many modern bestselling hardcover books use a partial cloth cover, with cloth covered board on the spine only, and only boards covering the rest of the book.

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WHAT IS A TEXTILE?

The word “textile” may be used to describe any woven material, or, more broadly, any cloth. Most fabrics are made from threads. These may be looped or passed under and over each other to create a firm cloth, or they may simply be matted together to form a kind of felt. There are thousands of different kinds of textile, each with its own properties and uses.

Textiles refer to materials that are made from fibers, thin threads or filaments which are natural or manufactured or a combination. Textiles are created by interlocking these yarns in specific patterns resulting in a length of cloth

The textile fibers are spun into yarn and then made into fabric by different methods like weaving, knitting, and felting. It forms the building block of a garment. So many properties of the fiber, like fiber type, yarn gauge, twist yarns per inch, weave float, and how it is processed and finished determine the final product.

When you got up this morning, you likely threw off the bed covers. Then, you went into the bathroom where you stepped on a rug. After leaving the bathroom you probably put on some clothing. Then, you sat down at a table that may have had a tablecloth on it. From there, you went to your car and sat down on a car seat. You came in to work and sat on a padded chair.

Those covers, rugs, clothes, tablecloths, car seat upholstery, and chair upholstery, were all example of textiles. A textile is a material made of natural or synthetic fibers.

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WHY CAN THE NUMBER OF PAGES IN A BOOK USUALLY BE DIVIDED EXACTLY BY 16?

Pages in a book are not printed one by one. They are printed on huge sheets of paper that then pass through another machine to be folded. When the book is bound (put into its cover), the edges of the pages are cut on a guillotine. A piece of paper folded in half creates four pages. Larger sheets of paper are folded to make 16, 32 or even 64 pages.

Most booklets are created with the Saddle-Stitch binding method. This method uses printed sheets that are folded and nested one inside the other and then stapled through the fold line with wire staples. The staples pass through the folded crease from the outside and are clinched between the centermost pages. The result is a very simple yet professional looking document.

Despite its relative simplicity, saddle-stitch booklets often pose a challenge for someone new to graphic design. This is because the page set-up for saddle-stitched booklets requires a different approach than for other types of bound books.

Saddle-stitched booklets are constructed of folded sheets. As such, each folded sheet joined within the finished booklet will form four pages of the booklet. This means the page count of every saddle-stitched booklet must always be a multiple of four (4). It is not possible to create a 7-page, 10-page, or 25-page saddle-stitched booklet. All saddle-stitched booklets must contain 4 pages, 8 pages, 12 pages, 16 pages, 20 pages, 24 pages and so on. Even if a page in the booklet is blank, it still counts as a page.

Needless to say, creating the layout file properly at the onset will help optimize your booklet’s press run…saving time, effort, and expense for all involved. The software you use to create the booklet will likely give you file layout choices, such as Reader Spreads or Printer Spreads. Because printing presses and production methods vary from print shop to print shop, do not automatically set up your booklet file in a particular spread or configuration without first consulting the printer you intend to use for producing your booklet.

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WHAT IS A TYPEFACE?

A typeface is an alphabet that has been specially designed for printing. It can usually be used in a variety of sizes and styles. The typeface chosen has a huge effect on how a printed page looks. Some typefaces are designed to be easy to read. Others are meant to catch the eye in headings and titles. Today, computers make it easy to manipulate type, stretching it or squashing it, for example, to create special effects. It is also easy to adapt typefaces or create your own. Each set of letters, numbers and symbols in a type-face is called a font.

A typeface is a set of characters of the same design. These characters include letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and symbols. Some popular typefaces include Arial, Helvetica, Times, and Verdana. While most computers come with a few dozen typefaces installed, there are thousands of typefaces available. Because they are vector-based (not bitmaps), typefaces can be scaled very large and still look sharp. The term “typeface” is often confused with “font,” which is a specific size and style of a typeface. For example, Verdana is a typeface, while Verdana 10 pt bold is a font. It’s a small difference, but is good to know.

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HOW ARE DIFFERENT TONES OF COLOUR PRINTED?

Some printed images use one solid colour. These words are printed in solid black ink, for example. The dots are so close together that no background colour shows through. Using increasingly widely spaced dots creates the impression of paler tones of grey.

The color model (process color, four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four ink plates used in some color printing: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (black).

The CMYK model works by partially or entirely masking colors on a lighter, usually white, background. The ink reduces the light that would otherwise be reflected. Such a model is called subtractive because inks “subtract” the colors red, green and blue from white light. White light minus red leaves cyan, white light minus green leaves magenta, and white light minus blue leaves yellow.

In additive color models, such as RGB, white is the “additive” combination of all primary colored lights, while black is the absence of light. In the CMYK model, it is the opposite: white is the natural color of the paper or other background, while black results from a full combination of colored inks. To save cost on ink, and to produce deeper black tones, unsaturated and dark colors are produced by using black ink instead of the combination of cyan, magenta, and yellow.

With CMYK printing, half-toning (also called screening) allows for less than full saturation of the primary colors; tiny dots of each primary color are printed in a pattern small enough that humans perceive a solid color. Magenta printed with a 20% halftone, for example, produces a pink color, because the eye perceives the tiny magenta dots on the large white paper as lighter as and less saturated than the color of pure magenta ink.

Without half-toning, the three primary process colors could be printed only as solid blocks of color, and therefore could produce only seven colors: the three primaries themselves, plus three secondary colors produced by layering two of the primaries: cyan and yellow produce green, cyan and magenta produce blue, yellow and magenta produce red (these subtractive secondary colors correspond roughly to the additive primary colors), plus layering all three of them resulting in black. With half-toning, a full continuous range of colors can be produced.

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