Nothing beats fall weather. Sit on your porch with a warm cup of coffee in hand, watch the colorful leaves fall gently from the trees, and curl up in your favorite sweater with a knitted blanket over your lap. Sweater season is officially on and it's time to pull out our comfy knits. But how did your sweater move from the factory to warming you on a breezy autumn night?

Mechanical

The main type of knitting for sweater manufacture is weft knitting. Machine sizes tend to be coarse (7 to 14 gauge) and in a flat lay. Round machines are also used for high productivity in tailoring production. Today's fully electronic V-bed machines can produce entire garments without any cutting and sewing. Using a flatbed, needle operations allow for transferring stitches, dividing stitches, and bed frames to shape and strengthen sweater panels.

Cut and sew

Cutting and sewing is the most common method of making sweaters. This is preferred because it increases productivity and reduces waste by addressing fabric defects. Using the tailoring method, sweater fabrics can be produced using the full width of the needle bed of the flatbed machine or the full diameter of the needle bed of the circular machine. Typically, several square yards of fabric will be produced as one piece, from which the various panels of the sweater are cut.

Panel knitting

Patchwork knitting is another common method of making sweaters. This method involves weaving specific sections of the garment pattern, called panels. Panels are defined by the exact number of routes and wales required for each size garment. During the knitting process, insert a separating line between the panels to separate them without cutting. Once the stitching is complete, the line of separation is removed and the stitching is marked according to the garment pattern.

Full fashion

Full molding and shaping during manufacturing eliminate the need for cutting and stitching. To shape a sweater on a knitting machine, the number of needles used during the knitting process is increased or decreased to vary the width of the fabric. Although fully formed and shaped use the same manufacturing techniques to create the panels, the final fabric will look different. When fully formed, a "fashion mark" is created by transferring specific loops to adjacent needles to widen or narrow the fabric. If no fashion marks are formed, the resulting sweater is called a "style" garment. Full molding provides a better fit and smoother seams.

Knitted garments

In whole garment knitting (also known as "ready-to-wear"), the entire sweater is knitted without any cutting and sewing or joining, resulting in a garment. The individual body and sleeve sections are knitted into the proper shape in tubular form, then knitted together and joined on a machine, using widening, narrowing, and binding techniques to produce the finished garment.

The above briefly introduces how sweaters are made. If you want to buy sweaters, please contact us.

ChenHong is a professional custom sweater manufacturer with more than 20 years of experience. We manufacture all kinds of men's/women's knitwear and sweaters. Dongguan ChenHong relies on a large family of 200+ skilled employees to continuously accept new knowledge and new technologies to provide high-quality garments and is committed to keeping up with production efficiency while improving garment quality. We treat small and big brands equally.