TextileUpdate Gwendolyn Hustvedt

I start a new season of the podcast with each new session of my Textiles course. Rather than make students go back in time, I duplicate episodes from previous seasons, and put them in the proper order. Season 3 will start on January 20th, but I am going to release the first episode, on Fiber Properties, a bit early to whet your appetite. If you have been listening to Season 2, you can continue to enjoy the same content there, or you can start over with a new year and a new season. i will insert a bit more new content and the spring goes along.

Our first podcast focuses on the properties of fibers that make the textiles we make out of these fibers behave in different ways.

Performance properties such as comfort as actually a dimension of performance made up of several properties, including absorbency.

We can categorize fibers using various features, including physical structures (morphology) that we can easily see under a microscope.

Fiber crimp deserves its own podcast because it is so cool! This 3D physical property influences lots of things like resiliency, bulk and luster.

While the surface morphology of fibers is an important influence on properties like luster and hand, it is the internal, chemical structure of the polymers that make up the fibers that has the greatest influence on properties like strength and absorbency.