A guide to athletic wear fabrics

Finding the right type of fabric for activewear is the trickiest part. The number of types, brands, and functions can confuse you to pick the wrong fabrics. Picking the wrong one can lead to unpleasant and undesirable results. The right material should assist the wearer in his or her sporting activity. Choosing the wrong one won't ever do that. In this consideration, the article outlines some important considerations which will guide you to successful fabric shopping for your athlete wear.

Choosing the material

Deciding on a suitable athletic material is complex when you have so many choices in the market. You can streamline your options in two categories i-e natural and synthetic.

Natural Fibers

While you are on the topic of cotton, keep in mind to eliminate cotton from your list. Cotton is the worst choice if you are looking for athletic fabric. Cotton, due to its hydrophilic nature, becomes 25 times heavier when wet. It also takes a long time to get dry. Wet cotton causes chafing in hot weather and hypothermia in cold weather. Since an athlete is bound to get sweaty and wet during the activity, it is a blunder to choose cotton for your activewear. However, if you prefer natural fiber for your clothes, the suitable alternatives are bamboo and merino wool.

Bamboo: Pandas' favorite meal, bamboo, is processed to make rayon or viscose. The resulting fabric is very soft, durable, wicking, and anti-microbial. All these properties make it very suitable for sportswear. Recently, bamboo has emerged as a highly eco-friendly alternative to synthetic fabric. Bamboo tends to become any fabric type after processing, but jerseys are considered most useful for athleticwear.

Merino wool: The warm, breathable, moisture-wicking, and anti-microbial material of merino wool suits exercise in all kinds of weather. Marion wool is not scratchy like conventional wool, especially when mixed with spandex fibers. Manufacturers often use this material in jerseys and suiting. However, manufacturers are now using it in casual wear as well.

Synthetics

The synthetic fibers are not natural, but they have evolved remarkably from their clingy and sweaty version of the 1970s. Moreover, not all polyesters fabrics are manufactured equally. If you see the details on the labels on athleticwear, you will notice that most of them are polyester. Yet you will notice that sportspeople in these jerseys sweat and stay cool during long exercises. The reason is that the latest versions of synthetic polyesters are made with features to allow moisture to evaporate through the weave. The sweat is wicked from the body and evaporates quickly to keep you dry and cool in your activity. Contrarily, some technical fabrics have opposite features, i-e they are waterproof. This property allows you to continue your game in a downpour without feeling steamy after a while.

Generally, stretchy, moisture-wicking and breathable are the properties that come to our minds when we think of synthetic fabrics. However, the technology has evolved the technical materials to fit the various description, from brush-backed and smooth jerseys to meshes, rib knits, and piques. In a nutshell, you can find a technical fabric in the market for every activity out there!

Guide for testing

Once you have decided the type of fabric that you are going to use for your activewear. The next important thing is to test its features. Order a sample of your chosen fabric. Many online vendors provide you free or very cheap sample swatches, saving you from purchasing the wrong thing in bulk. Besides the feel and color of the fabric, you will also need to test the capacity of shrinkage and suitability for customization as well. The same samples can be used to learn the technical aspects of fabric such as stretch, walkability, fiber content. These aspects are important to know as they determine that the material is suitable for custom workout shirts and other athletic wear.

Stretch: You can easily test the stretch ratio by marking 10cm on the fabric and testing against a ruler that how much it can stretch. If a 10 cm fabric stretches up to 15cm, then it has 50% stretch in the specific direction.

Fiber content: The easiest way to determine the natural or synthetic nature of the fabric is to burn a small piece. Next, you will need to assess the remain and the smoke. You can consult a guiding website to know the ratio of each content in a fabric. For instance, with this method, you can evaluate the wool ratio in a merino jersey.

Moisture-wicking ability: It is important to know that in which direction the moisture will move, so the right side makes the inside of the sportswear, contacting the body. An expert can tell this by the weave. However, you can run an informal test. Spray one side of the fabric lightly and note the time it will take to dry. Do the same with the other side and assess that which side dries up quickly. The quickest drying side should make the inner side of the clothing which will be against the skin.

Different sports and activities require specific types of fabric. For instance, football and basketball are strenuous and sweaty, so choose a fabric with the highest moisture-wicking capability. Waterproof materials will suit hiking in the rainy season and so on. Once you have considered all the guidelines, you are ready to purchase the best fabric for your custom athletic shirts.