Fabric defect · Dyeing and printing - Crease marks and rope marks: causes and how they count

ConductVision Textile is designed to flag each defect with its place on the roll, its size, its points and a still image. Your inspector names the defect and confirms or dismisses it.

On the defect map in the roll report, a crease mark is an irregular line.

A U.S. military glossary of knitting imperfections defines a crease as "a set line or mark usually made by folding and/or pressing" ¹. A U.S. federal glossary of fabric imperfections lists crease, mill wrinkle and hard crease together as one finishing imperfection. It defines rope marks as "long irregular indistinct markings on dyed or finished goods" and crowsfeet as "short indistinct markings on dyed or finished goods" ². In jet dyeing and in a beck, the fabric moves in rope form ³.

In knit fabric, a university module describes crease marks as "dark haphazard broken or continuous lines" ⁴. A crease can turn into a dye fault at more than one step. In certain constructions, Goldberg notes, greige creases "are impossible to remove in wet processing and they show up as dye streaks" ⁵, and creased fabric that passes through squeeze rolls in dyeing leaves a crease streak even after the crease itself is removed ⁶.

Some marks that look like handling damage come from the cloth itself. Goldberg describes a taffeta that showed light streaks wherever it was crushed or rubbed with a fingernail. Its construction was to blame: filling dyed much lighter than the warp showed through unevenly where the warp shifted ⁵.

On tubular knits, look along the folded edges. Tubular fabric can be "very sensitive to distinct edge lines being formed" in extraction ⁷, and in one example a compactor pressed wrinkles on the folded edge into hard creases ⁶. In woven cloth, a folded or doubled selvedge in finishing leaves a "more or less regular mark in the finished cloth along the selvage" ².

Rope marks are long and irregular, and crowsfeet short ². Knit crease marks can be broken or continuous ⁴.

One buyer manual, which follows the 4-point system of ASTM D5430, lists creasing among continuous defects, with uneven finish and barre, and gives up to 4 points to each linear yard or metre that has one. No linear yard or metre gets more than 4 points ⁸. A short crease is scored by its length: 1 point up to 3 inches, 2 points over 3 up to 6 inches, 3 points over 6 up to 9 inches and 4 points over 9 inches ⁹.

Cotton Incorporated's defect glossary rates its crease streak, roll-up crease and compactor crease examples as major finishing defects ⁶. Its grading guide defines a major defect as one severe enough, if exposed, to make the end item a second ¹⁰.

A suit jacket had irregular creases that no pressing would remove, wet, dry or with a steam iron. Its fabric carried a resin crease-resistant finish. Once the resin was stripped from a cutting in the laboratory, ordinary hand ironing took the creases out. Goldberg concluded that the creases were in the goods just before the resin was applied and cured, and the resin set them ⁵.

In a satin slip-cover fabric, short warpwise creases started at filling changes. Tests showed the nylon filling varied in how it stretched, and Goldberg put the creases down to yarn that had not been as fully shrunk, or "relaxed," as the rest ⁵.