Lab Dip
Dyed color samples from which the manufacturer can choose.
Lace
Ornamental openwork fabric, made in a variety of designs by intricate manipulation of the fibre by machine or by hand.
Lace Stitch
In this knitting stitch structure, loops are transferred from the needles on which they are made to adjacent needles to create a fabric with an open or a raised effect.
Lamb’s Wool
The first clip of wool sheared from lambs up to eight months old. The wool is slippery and resilient. It is used in fine grade woolen fabrics.
Lamborder
A flat rib knit, with specified dimensions, that is used to function as a placket and placket facing.
Lamé
a fabric woven with flat metal threads, usually silver or gold, which form either the background or the pattern.
Laser-cut Corduroy
A style created by using a laser to cut a design or overall pattern into corduroy. An intense, narrow beam of laser light vaporizes the corduroy pile where it strikes. The lighter-coloured base cloth of the cord is revealed, creating the pattern.
Lapped Seam (LS)
Seam made by overlapping the seam allowances of two or more fabric plies and sewing them together with the fabric plies extending in opposite directions.
Latch Tacking
Technique of drawing the excess thread chain of 500- and 600-class stitches at the beginning of each row of stitches into the stitches to secure them.
Laundry
A manufacturing company that takes unwashed jeans, and processes them. This processing includes washing, stone washing, sandblasting, and garment dyeing. Laundries today are critical in making jeans look commercial and was development has become equally important to fabric development in the jeanswear industry.
Lawn
A light thin cloth made of carded or combed yarns, this fabric is given a crease-resistant, crisp finish. Lawn is crisper than voile but not as crisp as organdy.
Left Hand Twill
A fabric weave where the twill line runs from the top left hand corner of the fabric towards the bottom right. Usually in piece dyed fabrics, left hand twill fabrics are woven from single plied yarns in the warp. In the jeans industry Lee has always used Left Hand Twill denims as their basic denim.
Leno Weave
A weave in which the warp yarns are arranged in pairs with one twisted around the other between picks of filling yarn as in marquisette. This type of weave gives firmness and strength to an open-weave fabric and prevents slippage and displacement of warp and filling yarns.
Linen
A fibre taken from straw of the flax plant. The stems are steeped in water to remove resinous matter and allow fermentation to take place. After fermentation is completed the fibrous material is separated from the woody matter and spun into thread. The fibre can be from 2” - 36” long with a natural color that varies from light ivory to dark tan or grey. Linen is very absorbent, and takes dyes more readily than cotton, but has poor resiliency.
Linet
A French-made lining fabric of unbleached linen.
Lining
A fabric that is used to cover the inside of a garment to provide a finished look. Generally, the lining is made of a smooth lustrous fabric.
Linon À Jour
A gauze-like linen fabric used as dress goods.
Lisle Yarn
A high-quality cotton yarn made by plying yarns spun from long combed staple. Lisle is singed to give it a smooth finish.
Locker Loop
A looped piece of fabric in the neck of a garment for the convenience of hanging the garment on a hook. Can also be located at the center of the back yoke on the inside or outside of a garment.
Locker Patch
A semi-oval panel sewn into the inside back portion of a garment, just under the collar seam, to reinforce the garment and minimize stretching when hung on a hook. The patch also allows for the garment tag or label to be sewn below the neckline to help prevent irritation.
Lockstitch
A stitch formed by interlocking needle thread with a bobbin thread in the center of a seam. This is the most common stitch formed on industrial sewing machines.
Loom
The weaving machine. The word loom (from Middle English lome, “tool”) is applied to any set of devices permitting a warp to be tensioned and a shed to be formed.
The warp shed is formed with the aid of heddles where one heddle is provided for each end of warp thread. By pulling one end of the heddle or the other, the warp end can be deflected to one side or the other of the main sheet of ends. The frame holding the heddles is called a harness.
Today there are three kinds of looms: dummy shuttle, rapier, and fluid jet.
The dummy shuttle type, the most successful of the shuttleless looms, makes use of a dummy shuttle, a projectile that contains no weft but that passes through the shed in the manner of a shuttle and leaves a trail of yarn behind it.
The rapier type conveys a pick of weft from a stationary package through the shed by means of either a single rapier or a pair of rapiers. Rapiers are either rigid rods or flexible steel tapes, which are straight when in the shed but on withdrawal are wound onto a wheel, in order to save floor space. Rapier looms are, on the whole, simpler and more versatile than dummy shuttle looms but are slower in weaving speed.
There are two kinds of fluid jet looms, one employing a jet of air, the other a water jet, to propel a measured length of weft through the shed. The significance of this is that nothing solid is passed into the shed other than the weft, which eliminates the difficulties normally associated with checking and warp protection, and reduces the noise to an acceptable level. The machines can attain great weaving speed and output.
Loop Dyed
One of the three major industrial methods of dyeing indigo yarns.
Loop Strength
The strength when one strand of thread is looped with another strand and then broken.
Looper
A stitch forming device used to interloop the bottom thread with needle thread on a chainstitch, overedge or coverstitch machine.
Low Profile
A cap style with a low slope that is more closely fitted to the head. Can be either structured or unstructured.
Luana
A fabric characterized by a crosswise rib effect, usually made with a filament yarn warp and a spun yarn filling.
Lubricant
An oil or emulsion finish applied to fibres to prevent damage during textile processing or to knitting yarns to make them more pliable.
Lubricity
The frictional characteristics of thread as it passes through the sewing machine and into the seam.
Luster Cord
Corduroy is a fabric in which the pile has been cut or woven in stripes, called cords or wales, that run the length of the cloth. “Luster” refers to the fabric’s surface sheen coupled with an ultrasoft hand.
Luster Satin
A silky-soft rayon satin highlighted with a subtle romantic luster and a smooth, elegant touch.
Lycra®
Dupont’s trademark for spandex fibre.
Lyocell
See Tencel. The generic name given to the cellulosic fibre developed by Courtaulds and marketed by them under the Tencel brand name.