Knit shirt fabrics

For a shirt, my guess would be the polyester, but I'm no expert. Lots of black cloth is really a lot of colors overdyed, so it might fade in odd ways. Genuine black dye is unusual and more expensive to produce. You get what you pay for!

Not that I would encourage anyone to use poly or even poly/cotton for patchwork. Nasty stuff! Go for silk instead, it also holds color well. Roberta in D

"gary" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@14g2000cws.googlegroups.com...

There is a lot of give and take with the choices.

Cotton is the most comfortable, but would fade. Though it is easily refreshed.

Polyester can't fade because the color is added prior to the thread being formed. Knit poly can be just horrible to wear though, plastic is not at all comfy.

Polycotton sort of combines the two, as you would expect. It is loads more comfortable, but does fade slightly.

So far as wear and fading though, polyester and polyblends have one huge drawback. In the areas where sweat gathers they deteriorate fairly rapidly. One of the first signs of this deterioration is color fading. You often see it as the nasty yellow stains on the collar and under the arms of white polyblend shirts, the stains that you absolutely cannot get out. You can't get the stains out because it is damage to the polyester and not something that will wash out. Bleach will only make it worse, though if the cotton content is high enough you can actually remove the damaged polyester with the bleach thus eliminating the stain. But the shirt surely does not live long after that. With darks the color fades and often becomes brownish. There is no fix to it.

So if color is the only consideration, polyester would be the way to go, unless you are in a warm climate or naturally perspire heavily.

obquilting: worn out cotton dress shirts make great foundations for foundation piecing. They starch easily and have already shrunk as much as they are ever going to, plus the light colored ones are often thin enough to see the pattern through.

NightMist