The hand of fabrics is ordinarily characterized by descriptive words such as “body”. “compliant.” This paper discusses an improved method for describing the hand of fabrics.
1. “The basic terms of hand” recommended by the authors as the improved descriptive words of hand are defined on the basis of the mechanical properties. They are instituted as shown in Table 1.
2. The expressions with ordinary descriptive words should be translated into those by the basic terms of hand. A dictionary for this purpose is presented as shown in Table 2.
3. The translations of 352 expressions by ordinary descriptive words have been tried. For the purpose of the comparisons between the results of these translations and those obtained from the measurements of the basic mechanical properties.
4. It is confirmed that all the translations are possible and that the possibility of errors, that is, the contradictions in both results, is within about 15%.

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This article deals with the heat treatment of nylon 6 fibers in super heat steam under atmospheric pressure at temperatures of 100°C to 200°C and compares it with treatment in dry heat
(1) The rise of temperature in the steam is accompanied by a decrease in thermal shrinkage and in density to a minimum and the increase of Young's modulus to a maximum at about 150°C. In dry heat, there is a monotonic increase in thermal shrinkage and in density and a monotonic decrease in Young's modulus up to 200°C.
(2) Treatment in steam below 150°C is greatly affected by relative humidity in the treatment chamber. Above 160°C, the treatment is quite similar to that in dry heat.
(3) Fibers are chemically more stable in steam than in dry heat because steam excludes oxygen.

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Lock stitched fabrics consist of a fabric element having length fraction φ_f and a seam element having length fraction φ_y coupled in series. It can be assumed that a stitch interval is the unit width which represents the tensile behavior of the lock stitched fabrics. The data obtained from tensile experiments with the stitched fabrics having various textures agree well with the results calculated from the tensile load-strain curves of each element on the above mentioned assumptions, when the samples are tested in the lower load region and kept in original seam forms. The tensile load-strain curves of the stitched fabrics resemble these of original fabrics. This is because φ_f is equal to nearly unity for usual stitched fabrics.
The breaking process for the stitched fabrics can be put into four types. The tensile ruptures of the stitched fabrics usually take place at the seam element. In this case, the seam strength efficiency can be calculated by the tensile stren th per a stitch interval of the fabrics and the loop strength of the sewing threads.

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