Working with Knits

Knit Construction

Knit fabrics are made up of a series of interlocking loops that result in a flexible construction. All knits have a degree of stretch; the yarn and the knit structure used will significantly vary the amount and the direction of this stretch. There are two basic knit structures, warp and weft:

Warp knit fabric is constructed with many yarns forming loops at the same time in a lengthwise direction. Each yarn is controlled by its own needle, and interlocked with its neighbouring yarn in a zigzag fashion. This interlocking process produces fabrics that will usually not run and have restricted stretchability.

See photo 1.

Weft knit fabric is constructed from looping a single yarn in a horizontal direction, and each succeeding line of the yarn being looped into the one before it. A knitting machine has a great number of hooked needles, which open and close automatically and hold each loop as the knitting