Several types of fabrics can improve the quality of your workout clothing. Your chosen material depends on breathability, moisture-wicking, stretchiness, and odor control.
For instance, breathable fabrics prevent you from overheating and keep you cool as you sweat. Other options include materials with moisture-wicking properties that pull away sweat to dry more quickly and stretchy fabrics that allow you to move freely.
Textured Fabrics
Fabric textures can make a big difference in your outfits. They can be rough, coarse, clingy, fuzzy, loopy, furry, and bulky. The texture of a fabric also depends on the fibers it is made of and how it’s constructed. There are dozens of different materials with surfaces that come in many varieties. Some are more durable than others. Surprisingly, there are many fabric ideas for athletic wear.
Textured fabrics are found in cotton, linen, silk, and denim. Some of these fabrics are woven, and some are knitted. You can also find these fabrics with a pleated or smocked texture. This type of texture is created by using heat, pressure, and chemicals to make the pleats or smocking on the fabric’s surface.
Another textured fabric that’s often used to make clothes is corduroy. This double-knit fabric has vertical ridges, which you can stretch crosswise. You can also find tweed fabric that has colored slubs on it. This fabric has a rustic feel and works well to create jackets, coats, and skirts.
Another textured fabric is terrycloth. This fabric has loops on one or both surfaces and is very absorbent. It’s usually used to make robes, towels, and slippers. You can find woven and knitted terrycloth, and it can be made from natural or synthetic fibers. This fabric can be finished with embroidered patterns to add style and design.
Performance Fabrics
Athletes train hard and play even harder, but uncomfortable in their sportswear can hinder their ability to perform. This is why many athletic wear brands have created fabrics that improve athletes’ experiences. For example, Nike’s Dri-FIT technology keeps their athletes drier and more comfortable so they can focus on their sport, not the discomfort of their clothing.
Another excellent performance fabric is Tencel, which is also known as lyocell. This cellulosic fabric is made from wood pulp and feels smoother than cotton. It also has health-enhancing properties, including keeping you fresh and odor-free. Brands like Tasc use this material to make super soft workout clothes, regulate your temperature, and repel odors.
The best performance fabrics for sportswear allow you to move without restriction. This is why many athletes are wearing garments made with stretchy, flexible materials. Stretchy and elastic fabrics enable athletes to move more naturally and help prevent injuries.
In addition to being flexible, many performance fabrics are easy to clean, which is excellent for people who live active lifestyles or entertain a lot. The best furniture crafted from these fabrics can withstand kids, pets, and those days when you spill wine on the sofa while watching your favorite TV show.
Woven Fabrics
Woven fabrics are incredibly sturdy and ideal for creating sportswear that withstand abuse. They can handle a lot of knocks without losing their shape and are very easy to wash, even when caked in mud. They can also withstand some degree of shrinkage and are less likely to fray if finished properly with techniques like pinking shears or hemming.
Woven fabric is created by weaving two sets of thread or yarn together, with one set of fibers running horizontally and the other running vertically. These are usually woven in a crisscross pattern, giving the fabric a classic basket-like look. Woven fabric is not very stretchy, though it may stretch a little along the warp and very little across the weft. This makes it quite sturdy and often used for button-up shirts and jeans.
A wide variety of woven fabrics exist, each with their unique properties. Depending on the weave, the material can have different finishes and qualities, such as water resistance, fire retardancy, crease resistance, stretchability, etc. Woven fabrics are also typically more expensive than knits, mainly due to the labor-intensive weaving. However, this is a cost many consumers are willing to pay for the quality and durability of woven fabric.
Sportswear Fabrics
The fabric used for sportswear is often worn next to the skin, so its tactile comfort must be excellent. This includes a soft feel that doesn’t irritate the skin and the ability to wick away sweat quickly. It must also withstand repeated washings, be easy to clean, and have anti-static properties.
The fabrics used for activewear must be lightweight but durable and should be breathable, waterproof, and resistant to stretch. This will ensure the material stays in place during movement, reduce product returns due to fit and performance issues, and increase consumer brand loyalty.
Fibers, yarns, fabrics, and coatings have been developed to optimize these requirements. For example, a new generation of functional materials has been developed that combines the advantages of elastic structures (to minimize fabric drag forces) with breathable finishes to manage moisture transport to maximize performance characteristics.
These textiles are made with specially engineered polyester fibers with large surface areas that allow for fast evaporation of sweat. They also feature hollow cores to provide insulation, which is particularly important for cold-weather sportswear. Other technologies have been introduced to reduce odor, wicking, and drying times to make sportswear more comfortable. These include using graft polymerization processes to create both hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces. In addition, new cellulose, bamboo, and recycled polyester fibers are being used to replace traditional synthetic sportswear materials.