Knitted Fabrics

Knitted fabrics is the collective term for knitted, warp-knitted and crocheted goods. All three techniques have in common that yarns are formed into stitches with the help of needles, joined together vertically.

Knitted or warp-knitted?

In knitting, the stitches are formed one after another; in weft knitting on circular machines, a whole row of stitches is produced at once. On the finished fabric it is no longer possible to tell which technique was used. As in hand knitting, a thread runs across the fabric, is laid in loops, and these loops (stitches) are linked to one another. Warp-knitted goods work quite differently – they produce a different look and function.

Underwear fabrics are made as tubes

Knitted fabrics can be made flat or round as tubular fabric – underwear fabrics are almost always made as tubes. In theory, a single thread forms a spiral and thus the tube; for reasons of efficiency, however, the tube is formed with as many threads as possible at once, their single-thread systems running one behind the other. Stitch formation requires knitting needles such as hook or latch needles, which guide the thread from needle to needle and join the looped thread rows into a knitted surface.

Learn more about knitted bindings in our Underwear Glossary.