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This paper aims to define the dominating factors having influence on the quality of the seam by sewing of fine fabrics and their optimum values.

Ten factors defining a seam's quality are chosen on the base of literary research. There was a check for concurrence of specialists' opinions, as the Spearman's coefficient of concordance was determined. A designed experiment with variation of the first three of the arranged factors was made. Mathematical models for the tensile and the aesthetical properties of the seam were devised, and also optimization made.

A classification of the properties, defining seam's quality, is made. A cause‐effect diagram of Ishikawa with aiming parameter – quality of the seam – has been developed. On the basis of a survey the factors that have a great deal of influence on it are presented. Mathematical models for seam's strength, elongation and smoothness are produced by changing the following factors: straining of the upper thread, size of the needle and load on the pressing foot are worked out. Received models are optimized.

The research was conducted using a sewing‐machine class 301. Received results and conclusions refer to seams made from base material – fabric from PES and sewing thread from 100 percent PE.

Optimum values have been established for the straining of the upper thread, the size of the needle and the load on the pressing foot by sewing of fabric from synthetic silk with mass applicable machines, needles, and sewing threads.

The research has been done in several directions: systemizing the seam's properties for evaluation of its quality and the factors defining it, inquiry into the significance of the different factors and implementation of a designed experiment. Consultations were made with a broad circle of specialists and these results are given in visual systems (schemes and graphs).

The conversion of fabric into a garment involves many interactions such as the selection of suitable sewing thread, optimization of sewing parameters, ease of conversion of fabric into the garment and actual performance of the sewn fabric during wear of the garment. The adjustment of all sewing parameters is necessary to ensure quality. The purpose of this paper is to define the parameters that affect seam quality comprehensively.

This study primarily focuses on the studies dealing with the effect of various parameters on-seam quality in detail. A systematic literature review was conducted.

The interactions between parameters may lead to different results than the effect of a single parameter. In addition, changing some parameters may have a positive effect on one element of seam quality while having a negative effect on another. For this reason, it is very important to properly select the parameters according to the specific end use of the garment products and also to consider the interactions.

The knowledge of various factors that affect seam quality will be helpful for manufacturers to improve production performance and to be able to produce high-quality seam.

The purpose of this review paper is to define the dominating factors (such as fiber, yarn, fabric structure, sewing thread, sewing needle and machine parameters) that affect the seam damages and causing defects. It also describes the various explanations of sewing defects in garment production and critically analyzes them for optimum selection of parameters and speeds for minimizing such faults. Hence, the knowledge of various factors which affect the sewing damages/defects will be helpful for garment manufacturers/researchers to know influence of the parameters and control the quality of producing seam.

This section is not applicable for a review paper.

Sewing damages such as needle cut and other sewing damages/defects are studied mostly in woven fabric. There are very few studies conducted on knitted fabric sewing damages/defects. The sewing damage problems do not have single solution that is capable of removing these damages in fabric. All the determined and affecting parameters related to fiber, yarn, fabric construction, sewing thread and sewing machine must be examined to design appropriate remedial measurement related to machine design, fabric parameters and sewing thread. This could help in minimizing or eliminating the needle cut and other sewing damage problems.

It is an original review work and is helpful for garment manufacturers/researchers to reduce the defects and be able to produce good quality seam.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a rational and complete design scheme of seam type of outdoor clothing, so as to improve the seam efficiency and appearance of outdoor clothing, as well as to provide an optimal seam base for the subsequent pressure adhesive process.

Four types of common outdoor fabrics and four seam types were selected. Seam strength and thickness were measured. Seam efficiency and seam thickness strain were calculated to evaluate seam quality. Multiple linear regression analysis was adopted to analyze the influence of seam type essential factors on seam strength.

Among the component factors of seam type, based on two stitches, seam strength was significantly affected by stitch distance, followed by fabric layer on the seam side. The increase of stitch and the interaction among fabrics can effectively improve the seam efficiency. The methods are as follows: the increase of stitches, stitch distance shortening, the increase of fabric layers, etc. The change of seam type had no significant influence on seam thickness strain. A seam-type design scheme of outdoor clothing with good mechanical and appearance properties was designed by choosing the seam types FX₁, FX₂ and FX₄.

This paper designed a practical scheme of seam-type design of outdoor clothing, which has been applied in the industrial production process. It is important for guiding the improvement of seam quality and the production efficiency of outdoor clothing.

The focus of this research is to identify the optimum commercial grade sewing thread and stitch density to be used with woven linen shirting fabric used in making men’s formal shirt. Maximum seam efficiency and interaction between the process parameters were assessed.

The classical method of optimisation involves varying one variable at a time and keeping the others constant. This is often useful, but it does not explain the effect of interaction between the variables under consideration. In this study, the response surface methodology was used for securing a more accurate optimisation of seam quality (seam efficiency) of woven linen shirting fabric. The response surface method is an empirical statistical technique used for multiple regression analysis of quantitative data obtained from statistically designed experiments by solving the multivariate equations simultaneously. Through this system, the input level of each process parameter, i.e. variable and the level of the selected response (seam efficiency), can be quantified. The central composite, Box–Behnken, is the common design used here.

The maximum seam efficiency is 79.62 per cent and 83.13 per cent in warp and weft direction, respectively, with optimum areal density (G) of 110 g/m² of woven linen shirting fabric. The most suitable stitch density and ticket number of commercial grade sewing thread for woven linen shirting fabric are 13-13.5 and 40, respectively.

This study could help apparel manufacturers to evaluate seam quality, i.e. seam efficiency of woven linen fabric for men’s shirting, more effectively from the proposed regression model. The optimisation of the commercial grade sewing thread size and stitch density used in this study for woven linen shirting fabric within the range of 110-150 g/m² will facilitate apparel engineers in production planning and quality control.

There is dearth of research on seam quality for woven linen shirting fabric using commercial grade sewing thread and engineering of prediction regression model for the estimation of seam efficiency by using process parameters, namely, fabric G, thread size and thread density and their interaction.

Examines the effects of directional variations in woven fabric properties on the behaviour of fabrics as they are plied and sewn together to form a seam. This is an important practical consideration, since garment manufacturing frequently involves the sewing of two fabric plies of completely different and constantly changing bias angles — none of which is along the grain line. Examines the variations in the properties of five woven materials, all lightweight and commonly used in women's summer apparel. The Kawabata Evaluation System (KES) was used to measure the mechanical and surface properties of strips, cut at different angles, from the test materials. To investigate the effect of orientation on seam quality, two plies cut from the same fabric but at different angles were sewn together under selected conditions. The resulting seams were characterized for seam quality using AATCC standards.

Seam efficiency plays an important role for obtaining a desired seam quality. Therefore, this issue is often referred in research papers. The purpose of this paper is to determine the seam strength and efficiency as well as examining, if and how such factors as: a kind of fabric, kind of thread, kind of seam and the stitch density influence the transverse seam strength and the seam efficiency.

For research four types of polyester/wool fabrics having different structural parameters and two types of polyester sewing threads were used. Three types of seam were made. The fabric samples were sewn using lockstitch with three different stitch densities. Obtained in this way seams were tested on the tensile machine. The influence of individual factors on the seam strength and its efficiency was assessed statistically using a multivariate variance analysis (ANOVA).

The findings of this study revealed that the independent variable – stitch density affect significantly of the seam strength as well as its efficiency. Seam strength and seam efficiency values increase with the increase stitch density. Moreover, the variance analysis showed that a kind of fabric also is a statistically significant factor for the seam efficiency and its strength. Furthermore, in the case of seam efficiency it is also important to the stitch direction. However, the study did not show an impact of kind of thread and kind of seam on dependent variables: the seam strength and its efficiency.

Due to the fact that this paper focuses on the seams made only on wool/polyester fabrics with two the most popular weaves, involving only two sewing PES threads, the conclusions presented in this paper are valid only to this assortment and cannot be generalized.

So far, it has not been taken research on the effect of seams with the different number of sewn layers on the seam strength and efficiency. This issue has been taken in this work.

Denim fabrics of various weight ranges were sewn with three different compositions of sewing threads ‐ 100 per cent cotton, 100 per cent polyester and corespun thread ‐ with all possible ticket numbers, to examine the interaction of various fabric‐thread combinations. The sewing thread performance in terms of seam efficiency, pucker, slippage and needle cutting index was determined and the results were analysed in the light of the dimensional and mechanical properties of the fabric, thread and seam itself. Corespun threads were found to be most suitable from a seam efficiency point of view. However, other sewing parameters such as pucker, slippage and damage were adversely affected by sewing with corespun threads. Tensile properties of fabrics and threads were found to be the most important factors for sewability. Breaking strength and elongation of the fabric and sewing thread had an excellent correlation with seam efficiency. Cotton threads were found to be most suitable for sewing denim from a seam puckering point of view. On the other hand, polyester threads were more prone to develop seam pucker. Corespun thread was the greatest yarn damager compared to cotton and polyester threads. Fabric cover factor and sewing thread diameter were highly correlated with the needle cutting index.

Ultrasonic seaming: the pertained technology for this research is identified as one of the alternatives which offers many advantages over traditional sewing. Ultrasonic technology was initially used for plastic welding. It has been utilized in automotive, electronics and electrical appliances, filtration, packaging, aerospace and apparel industries. However, the use of sewing machine, needle and threads still remains as the most popular method of joining fabrics together. The aim of this research is to investigate the possibility of constructing different types of seams for clothing using ultrasonic technology which is an existing technology that is not fully utilized and not fully realized the advantages associated with it in the apparel industry.

Experimental reflective practice' was used as the main method for practical investigation. The basis for analysis was formed by reflections made during and after the experimentations.

Though the construction of the seams are possible, due to thickness of the layers, LSc and LSe seam types were not successful in terms of quality. The bound seam type and the flat seams are possible using ultrasonic technology without the blade, the quality is not satisfactory when comparing to the conventional sewing technique. However, ornamental stitching (OS) and edge finishing (EF) with ultrasonic are possible and successful.

The results of this study will shed more light on ways of using ultrasonic technology in the apparel industry.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a robust method for automatic detection of seam lines based only on digital images of the garments.

A local standard deviation pre‐processing filter is applied to enhance the contrast between the seam line and the texture and the Prewitt operator extracts the edges of the enhanced image. The seam line is detected by a maximum at the Radon transform. The proposed method is invariant to the illumination intensity and it has been also tested with moving average and fast Fourier transform low‐pass filters used in the pre‐processing module. Extensive experiments are carried out in the presence of additive Gaussian and uniform noise.

The proposed method detects 109 out of 118 seams when the local standard deviation is used at the pre‐processing stage, giving a mean distance error between the real and the estimated line of 2 mm when the image is digitised at 97 dpi. However, in case the images are distorted by additive Gaussian noise at 20 dB signal‐to‐noise ratio, the moving average low‐pass filtering method gives the best results, detecting 104 noisy images.

The proposed method detects seam lines that can be approximated by a continuation of straight lines. The current work can be extended in the detection of the curved parts of seam lines.

Since the method addresses garments instead of seam specimens, the proposed approach can be imported in automatic systems for online quality control of seams.

Local standard deviation belongs to first‐order statistics, which makes it suitable for texture analysis and that is why it is mostly used in web defect detection. The novelty in the approach, however, is that by considering the seam as an abnormality of the texture, the authors applied that method at the pre‐processing stage to enhance the seam before the detection. Moreover, the presented method is illumination invariant, a property that has not been addressed in similar methods.