La Bricoleuse (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
labricoleuse) wrote2008-08-01 09:21 pm
labricoleuse) wrote2008-08-01 09:21 pm
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USITT Fabric Modification Symposium - Day 2!
Today was the second day of the symposium; while we waited for our output from yesterday's classes to cure/dry/etc., we toured three companies and organizations in the Carolina piedmont whose work is of related interest to costume professionals.
The first stop of the day was a non-profit development and consultancy company called [TC]2. They do a huge range of research and development of technology for the apparel and textile industries. One of their ongoing projects is body-scanners and related software. They market it in a variety of areas (the ImageTwin website being one example, and the online resource archive Tech Exchange), and they are apparently taking a body-scanner to SIGGRAPH this year as well. They also have developed a lot of new products and equipment for the digital textile printing industry and are the folks who conducted the landmark SizeUSA study of anthropometric measurements across a range of USA demographics.
The second stop was at the offices of the non-profit advocacy and development group, Cotton Incorporated, a resource and research organization that furthers the development of the international cotton industry, and the third stop was the College of Textiles at North Carolina State University.
[TC]2
this is one of the digital fabric printers at TC2, printing yardage
some sample products made from digitally-printed textiles
garments and home goods made from digitally-printed textiles
schematic of textile printing designs for a line of swimwear
hand-painted designs have been scanned and reproduced at different scales onto different size products
Gerber cutting machine
It's funny, just this past weekend, i was visiting my grandfather who worked his entire career in the Berkline furniture factory in Morristown, TN. We were talking about fabric manufacturing machinery in relation to my post a few weeks back about the Wolf Blazer round knife and he told me about when Berkline installed its first Gerber machine to cut the upholstery fabric for their furniture. Uncanny that he would mention that last weekend, and here i am this weekend checking out what's the newest innovation from Gerber in industry cutting machines. We saw this machine cut a set of handbag linings in like, 2 minutes.
here's something i want at work: those blue bags are attached to vacuum hoses
that suck serger waste right off the blade--no pile of linty serger worms!
this is the industrial version of a bullet steamer
Cotton Incorporated
this machine turns cotton fiber into roving
this machine spins cotton thread onto spools
i love strange industrial iconography--this indicates only trained employees can operate the machine
industrial knitting machine
enormous dye vat
this machine runs the king of all spin-cycles
these dye machines look a bit more familiar
sample dyeing machine in the color-matching lab
i am a fool for dye record forms--i couldn't xerox them so i took pictures
another dyeing form
NCSU College of Textiles
jacquard loom
antique cord braider machine
modern loom
19th century loom
punchcard patterns for weave designs
this black fabric is being woven from carbon fiber
dyeing large amounts of yardage
this machine was in operation, looping the blue fabric through a dyebath continually,
with a motion kind of like a taffy-pulling machine
garment pieces digitally printed with gear motifs on lycra
for a production by the Carolina Ballet
some samples of 3D-woven fabrics, used in applications like car bodies,
boat hulls, and Mars landers (seriously)
student projects of themed jacquard collections of
fabric motifs such as this hung around the building
old sock knitting machine
giant samples of different kinds of knit patterns
manual knitting machine
larger tube knitting machine
You know, i could probably write a few screenfuls of text about all this, but frankly, i'm pooped! After our long day of tours, we all adjourned to the Carolina Inn for bluegrass and beer on their front lawn, which was lovely but wasn't exactly conducive to my spending the rest of the evening writing up my thoughts on the intersection between industry, manufacturing, science, artisanship, craft, and artistry. In fact, just articulating that much pretty much did me in. So, i'm going to hope that my thirtysome photographs are worth thirtysomethousand words for you guys, and see about a hot bath and a good book!
Tomorrow...finishing up our coursework projects and the end of this amazing long-weekend of learning!
The first stop of the day was a non-profit development and consultancy company called [TC]2. They do a huge range of research and development of technology for the apparel and textile industries. One of their ongoing projects is body-scanners and related software. They market it in a variety of areas (the ImageTwin website being one example, and the online resource archive Tech Exchange), and they are apparently taking a body-scanner to SIGGRAPH this year as well. They also have developed a lot of new products and equipment for the digital textile printing industry and are the folks who conducted the landmark SizeUSA study of anthropometric measurements across a range of USA demographics.
The second stop was at the offices of the non-profit advocacy and development group, Cotton Incorporated, a resource and research organization that furthers the development of the international cotton industry, and the third stop was the College of Textiles at North Carolina State University.
this is one of the digital fabric printers at TC2, printing yardage
some sample products made from digitally-printed textiles
garments and home goods made from digitally-printed textiles
schematic of textile printing designs for a line of swimwear
hand-painted designs have been scanned and reproduced at different scales onto different size products
Gerber cutting machine
It's funny, just this past weekend, i was visiting my grandfather who worked his entire career in the Berkline furniture factory in Morristown, TN. We were talking about fabric manufacturing machinery in relation to my post a few weeks back about the Wolf Blazer round knife and he told me about when Berkline installed its first Gerber machine to cut the upholstery fabric for their furniture. Uncanny that he would mention that last weekend, and here i am this weekend checking out what's the newest innovation from Gerber in industry cutting machines. We saw this machine cut a set of handbag linings in like, 2 minutes.
here's something i want at work: those blue bags are attached to vacuum hoses
that suck serger waste right off the blade--no pile of linty serger worms!
this is the industrial version of a bullet steamer
Cotton Incorporated
this machine turns cotton fiber into roving
this machine spins cotton thread onto spools
i love strange industrial iconography--this indicates only trained employees can operate the machine
industrial knitting machine
enormous dye vat
this machine runs the king of all spin-cycles
these dye machines look a bit more familiar
sample dyeing machine in the color-matching lab
i am a fool for dye record forms--i couldn't xerox them so i took pictures
another dyeing form
NCSU College of Textiles
jacquard loom
antique cord braider machine
modern loom
19th century loom
punchcard patterns for weave designs
this black fabric is being woven from carbon fiber
dyeing large amounts of yardage
this machine was in operation, looping the blue fabric through a dyebath continually,
with a motion kind of like a taffy-pulling machine
garment pieces digitally printed with gear motifs on lycra
for a production by the Carolina Ballet
some samples of 3D-woven fabrics, used in applications like car bodies,
boat hulls, and Mars landers (seriously)
student projects of themed jacquard collections of
fabric motifs such as this hung around the building
old sock knitting machine
giant samples of different kinds of knit patterns
manual knitting machine
larger tube knitting machine
You know, i could probably write a few screenfuls of text about all this, but frankly, i'm pooped! After our long day of tours, we all adjourned to the Carolina Inn for bluegrass and beer on their front lawn, which was lovely but wasn't exactly conducive to my spending the rest of the evening writing up my thoughts on the intersection between industry, manufacturing, science, artisanship, craft, and artistry. In fact, just articulating that much pretty much did me in. So, i'm going to hope that my thirtysome photographs are worth thirtysomethousand words for you guys, and see about a hot bath and a good book!
Tomorrow...finishing up our coursework projects and the end of this amazing long-weekend of learning!