Warehouse & Co. T-Shirt Production Process
Warehouse & Co. T-Shirt Production Process
Introducing the spinning and fabric factories that are the core of the uneven fabrics of Warehouse Company T-shirts
Warehouse Company has been making as standard products for more than 10 years, have a slight unevenness in the fabric, and when exposed to light, they create a slight shadow in the horizontal row, so they are commonly known as “shadow borders”.
The charm is the unique texture of the fabric. In general, the T-shirts tend to be soaked in, flocked, painted, etc., and the texture of the print tends to be noticed, but because of the texture peculiar to the fabric of the body, it creates a vintage-like feel with combination of the ageing print.
The three major elements that make up the fabric of their T-shirts are “cotton,” “thread,” and “knitting.” T-shirts evolved from underwear and spread as military wear in the 1940s and athletic wear in the 1950s. Among them, the one that we found most appealing was the ’50s T-shirt. Reproducing the uneven fabric peculiar to T-shirts from the ’40s to’ 50s. The warehouse company has thoroughly analyzed this fabric to faithfully reproduce it.
Raw materials for cotton are collected from all over the world in the warehouse of Taisho Spinning Co., Ltd., which is a spinning factory. Warehouse carefully select and use elastic cotton suitable for their T-shirts.
Selection of raw cotton: In order to make uneven yarn with a natural wavelength, it was necessary to choose cotton that was more elastic than usual. Warehouse have selected from a huge variety of cotton varieties and arrived at the optimum cotton.
A process called roving before it becomes a thread. Although it is already thread-like, it will be finished finer in the next process.
The ring (silver parts) attached to the spinning frame rotates to twist the yarn. This is the origin of the ring thread
The spinning process, which is the final stage of spinning. At this time, by making a difference in the rotation speed of the two rollers (brown parts) that send out the thread, a natural uneven thread is created.
The natural uneven yarn of the vintage T-shirts mentioned above is a by-product of the immature spinning technology of the time. For that reason, it is extremely difficult to reproduce the uneven thread using modern technology. However, after repeated research with a spinning factory, Warehouse succeeded in creating a natural uneven yarn.
Warehouse uneven threads are arranged side by side one by one. If you look closely, the thin part and the thick part are mixed (Right) In general uneven yarn, the thick part is extremely emphasized. You can’t make a warehouse shadow border with this fabric
From the era of T-shirts as underwear to athletic wear, there were many fabrics using thick threads. Therefore, Warehouse paid attention to the sinker knitting machine made in Japan, which started operation around the 1960s.
The sinker knitting machine use was originally used for double-sided knitting with thick threads such as milling underwear, but Warehouse remodel it into a single-sided knitting machine so that they could knit the T-shirt’s plain fabric with thick threads. Therefore, it is possible to make a fabric that makes the best use of the characteristics of natural uneven yarn.
