Items Tagged ‘Technical’
More than you ever wanted to know about polyester
What is polyester?
Polyester is the name for a group of substances. They are all polymers of chemicals called esters. A polymer is a very long molecule, made by sticking together many copies of a smaller molecule, like a necklace made of popper beads or the many carriages that make up a train. Because their molecules are very long, certain polymers (like polyester) make good strong fibres.
Is polyester natural or man-made?
Naturally occurring polyesters do exist, but the name is usually used for synthetic polyesters made in a chemical process from substances extracted from oil.
The first polyesters
Naturally occurring polyesters were first discovered in about 1830 but the first synthetic polyester was invented just before the first World War by W.H. Carruthers, a …
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Microfibre
Microfibres are incredibly fine fibres with filaments thinner than one denier. They are created by drawing out the fibres much further than the normal five times their length.
Microfibre fabrics are incredibly soft and hold their shape well. They are very popular for sportswear as they have excellent wicking properties. This is because the incredibly thin fibres have a very high surface area for their weight and so are very efficient at drawing moisture along their length by capillarity.
Many microfibre garments are knitted, but they can also be woven, especially in outerwear. Because they are so fine, the fibres can be woven extremely tightly to form a dense, windproof weave, which is also very light. Microfibre can also …
Tags: fibres, fleeces, microfibre, Microfibres, Technical, Tracksuits
Our sizes
Our sizes
Our garments all come in a range of sizes. Here’s what they all mean.
Shirts, jackets and tops sizes
Size Name
Chest Measurement (inches)
Child S
26” to 28”
Child M
28” to 30”
Child L
30” to 32”
Youth
32” to 34”
S
34” to 36”
M
38” to 40”
L
42” to 44”
XL
46” to 48”
XXL
50” to 52”
XXXL
54” to 56”
Trousers and shorts sizes
Size Name
Waist Measurement (inches)
Child S
24”
Child M
24” to 26”
Child L
26” to 28”
Youth
28” to 30”
S
30” to 32”
M
32” to 34”
L
36” to 38”
XL
40” to 42”
XXL
44”
XXXL
46”
Sock sizes …
Tags: chest measurement, sock sizes, Technical, waist measurement
Uploading Images to Football Kit Designer
OK, so you’ve got this far, but you’re unsure about how to upload that image. This article should help you solve the problem.
Uploading files to websites can be tricky. It’s a two-step process:
First, locate the file on your hard drive. Clicking the button (marked ‘browse’ or ‘choose file’) will open a dialog box of your computer’s file system. You will need to navigate to the directory containing the image file, select it with your mouse, and then click the OK button in the dialog box (on some computers, it will be marked ‘Open’, slightly confusingly).
You should then be returned to the web page, now with the image file name (or the first bit of it) visible next to the …
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Tags: image formats, irfanview, Technical
All about Mesh Lining and Panels
Our San Marino Training Jacket, San Marino Training Trousers, Engage Taslan Training Jacket, and Engage Taslan Training Trousers all feature meshing, either as mesh panels on the sides of each garment or as a special mesh lining. Mesh helps let air circulate to increase ventilation so you can cool down and get rid of sweat more quickly. You will even find this feature in our Engage Socks.
The panels and lining are made of a knitted fabric so they give good stretch and freedom of movement. The knit is very open so air can circulate freely, cooling and carrying away moisture. They are also made from a wicking polyester fabric which helps to carry away …
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Tags: mesh panels, Technical, ventilation
What does windproof mean?
Our training kit windshirts, jackets and trousers are all made from a windproof fabric.
Windproof fabric is fabric that doesn’t let the wind through. They are very useful for keeping you warm. Even though they may be thin and not very warm on their own, windproofs keep in all the insulating air trapped by inner layers of clothes, which otherwise gets blown away. Fabrics are made windproof by weaving them very tightly, so that the gaps between the threads are too small for air to pass through at speed.
Wicking fabric
Wicking fabrics are modern technical fabrics which draw moisture away from the body. They are made of high-tech polyester, which, unlike cotton, absorbs very little water. Cotton will absorb 7% of its weight in water, polyester only 0.4%. Cotton will therefore hang onto your sweat, making your garment heavy and unpleasantly clammy. Wicking polyester has a special cross-section and a large surface area, which picks up moisture and carries it away from your body, spreading it out, to evaporate easily on the outside of the fabric. So you stay cool and dry.
Breathability
Some people will refer to wicking fabrics as being breathable – that is, they let air in and sweat out. Breathable showerproof and waterproof fabrics have tiny …
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Tags: Breathability, permeability, Technical, wicking fabrics
What is a ’shell fabric’?
This is a term particularly used of outdoor clothing – trekking, mountaineering, etc. A shell fabric is the outer layer of warm clothing, often the outer layer of an insulated jacket, or it can be a single-layer outer jacket or shirt. Our training kit windshirts, jackets and trousers are all outer shell items made from shell fabrics, in this case, Taslan. They are very adaptable garments and can be used not just for cold weather training and travel, but for other outdoor pursuits.
We think that the ideal shell fabric:
Keeps out water, to help keep the inner layers dry and minimise heat loss from conductance.
Is breathable, to prevent sweat from building up and making the inner layers damp …
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Tags: cold weather training, shell fabric, single layer, Technical
What does showerproof mean?
Showerproof fabric is fabric that resists water. You could pour a glass of water over it and watch the liquid simply form beads and run off. However for a garment to be completely waterproof it must have its seams specially sealed on the inside and a protected zip, so that rain cannot get inside at all. This, of course adds to the cost of the item, so it’s not something to build in unless you need it to function in heavy rain. You won’t usually be wearing your football training gear climbing mountains in torrential downpours, so we haven’t added these features. However, you should find they protect you against all but heavy rain, allowing you to keep training …
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Tags: fabric, fabrics, football training, heavy rain, Showerproof, Technical
What is Taslan?
Taslan is a modern, high-tech, woven polyester fabric. It is a strong, durable fabric, ideal for gear you may want to train in every day of the week. It’s also very quick drying and able to wick moisture away from the body quickly and efficiently, so you don’t get all sweaty. And because it dries so quickly (it doesn’t hold the water like cotton), you’re not left standing in cold, clammy clothes when you stop training.
The base polyester is coated with Nuva, a substance with similar properties to Teflon®, which makes the fabric showerproof. You could pour a glass of water over our Taslan and it would form beads and run off. It is also stain-resistant – the water-repellent …
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Tags: nuva, taslan, Technical, teflon
Printed logos
We’ve just invested in a new full-colour sublimation printing system which is accurate, precise, durable and, of course, economical.
Using our system, any design can be printed from a computer onto special transfer paper. The print out is then loaded into a high-tech optic-eye cutter. This detects the edges of the design with very high precision and then cuts away the unnecessary bits of paper. This high precision technology means that extremely intricate designs can be printed with ease and clarity.
The cut out is then transferred onto the garment in a heat press, by a process called sublimation. We’re using the new generation of transfer papers which sublimate at 140ºC. Polyester starts to degrade at 150ºC and earlier …
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Tags: colour logos, printed logos, sublimate, sublimation, Technical
Glossary
Bespoke
Made-to-order – e.g. hand made by a tailor to your exact measurements, or, in this case, specially made to the exact colour combinations you want, so you can specify the colour of every single panel in the shirt.
Colourways
Colour combinations available, e.g. if a shirt is available in red with white stripes, or black with blue stripes, that’s two colourways.
Denier
A measure of the thickness and weight of a fibre. Whatever 9000m of the fibre weighs, in grams, is its denier. So 9000m of one denier fibre weighs 1 gram.
Fleece
is a high-tech knitted fabric that provides insulation while staying light. Fleeces dry quickly and are breathable.
Handle
is a term used in the textile industry to describe the way a fabric feels. For example, …
Tags: Bespoke, Colourways, Denier, fleece, glossary, Handle, Overlocking, Technical
Fleece
Fleece is a modern hi-tech knitted fabric designed to provide insulation for very little weight. Fleeces dry quickly and are breathable.
How can I judge the quality of a fleece?
Good quality fleece has a plush, soft and silky handle and if you hold it up to the light you’ll see that light does not pass through it. Cheap fleece feels less plush, and it’s thinner.
Cheap fleece will also quickly ‘pill’ with washing (i.e. the fibres start to stick together and the surface becomes clumpy, ‘bobbly’ and not so soft feeling). To tell if a fleece will pill, look carefully at the surface of the fabric. Do the fibres lie along the surface, like felt, or do they stand up, away from …
Tags: fleece, insulation, pill, Technical
Fabrics for football kit
Most of our range is made from forms of polyester or a polyester/cotton blend (referred to as polycotton). This is because polyester is tough and durable, easy to care for (e.g. it doesn’t crease) and has good natural wicking properties. Our polycotton blend is 65% polyester and 35% cotton.
Why polyester?
Polyester has been around a while, but modern production methods let us create hi-tech fabrics out of it. Polyester fibres are very strong and resistant to abrasion (i.e. the fibres don’t break easily) and to stretching. We can happily tell you more than you ever wanted to know about polyester.
One of the great properties of polyester for sportswear is that it has fantastic wicking properties. This is mainly because …
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Tags: cotton blend, polycotton, polyester cotton, properties of polyester, Technical
Our stitching
We’ve just invested in a series of new, state of the art, Toyota Expert 9000 embroidery machines. This is the best embroidery machine on the market. It takes designs in electronic form and turns them into tight, precise stitching.
The Expert 9000 embroiders with 15 needles at once (so you can use up to 15 colours of thread in one design) and up to 1,200 stitches per minute. Also, this is a single head machine – i.e. each machine has only one embroidery head, embroidering one garment at once.
Our previous machines were 12 head – they could embroider 12 garments at once. But we found that this led to a lot of ‘down time’. If one head broke or a thread …
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Tags: embroidery, stitching, Technical, Toyota Expert 9000
Why we think long sleeves are better for grassroots football
You may have noticed that although premiership football shirts have short sleeves, all our football shirts have long sleeves, even though we promise to give you premiership kit at grassroots prices. Why is that? Well, here at Football Kit Designer we’re committed to grassroots sport, because that’s where we think the soul of the game lies.
Our staff have years of experience in playing and supporting at grassroots level and we are always talking to (and more importantly listening to) our customers. We know that premiership teams are playing in huge stadiums, with stands that block out the wind, etc, packed with thousands of spectators, under huge lights. Our customers are playing on open pitches, to smaller crowds, without the lights, …
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Tags: grassroots football, long sleeved shirts, Technical
Peached fabric
Peaching is a finishing process we use on the polycotton for our drill tops. After weaving, fabric is stretched while drying. This is when it takes on its stability. While drying the fabric is ‘peached’ by being brushed with abrasive rollers. These very gently break some of the small fibres on the outside of the fabric, or tease fibres out. If you could look at a peached fabric under a microscope it would look a bit hairy. It’s called peaching because it’s supposed to make the fabric feel like the fur on a peach. This process gives a fabric a nice, soft feel and makes it more comfortable to wear.
Tags: drill tops, peached fabric, polycotton, Technical
Raglan sleeves
In a raglan sleeve the piece of fabric making up the sleeve doesn’t end at the shoulder, but goes all the way up to the collar or neckline. The sleeve is fitted to the rest of the garment with a diagonal seam that goes from the underarm straight to the neckline.
This means that they are wider in the underarm area and the sleeve fits more loosely than other sorts of sleeve. They also have no seam at the shoulder. Because of this Raglan sleeves allow a more natural range of movement and are very comfortable, making them ideal for sportswear.
Tags: raglan, sportswear, Technical
What is sublimation?
In printing, this means that dye is transferred onto the fabric by heating. The heating process causes the special dye chemicals to vaporise; they then solidify again on the fabric, bonding with the polyester molecules. This is a very accurate printing process, particularly known for its faithful colour reproduction.
Tags: accurate printing, sublimation, Technical
Teardrop zips
The zips in our tracksuits are what we call teardrop zips. They are extremely thin and sewn into seams so they are less bulky and visible and they have a distinctive ergonomic teardrop shaped toggle.
Tags: teardrop, Technical, Tracksuits, zips
Choosing a football kit
The main consideration is comfort. You want to be comfortable when playing, and when waiting on the touchline, in training, when travelling to the match, etc., so think about the versatility of the kit you’re looking at.
Temperature
The thing that will most affect your comfort is probably temperature. You want kit that allows you to cool down – cool-mesh panels are ideal for this. Your body needs to be able to get rid of heat and moisture. But you also want to keep warm during inactive periods.
Wicking fabrics are a good investment – they draw moisture away from your body, but don’t absorb a lot of it, instead the moisture is spread out on the surface, to easily evaporate. …
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Tags: Technical