Warp knitted textile fabric with pattern of pleated fabric sections
AssigneeGuilford Mills, Inc.
InventorStephen L. Tacy
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A three-bar warp knitted fabric whose technical face has a pattern of coursewise and walewise arrayed pleated sections is produced on a three-bar warp knitting machine by knitting ground yarns on the machine's middle bar to provide a fabric base or ground, knitting pleat-forming yarns on the machine's top bar in extended walewise floats over selected groups of courses at the technical back of the fabric to cause the ground to gather into coursewise pleats at the technical face, and knitting tie-down yarns on the machine's bottom bar in an alternating in-out pattern to appear at the technical face only in selected spaced groups of wales wherein the tie-down yarns also float over the selected groups of courses to define the coursewise pleats into an array of discrete pleated sections.
Claims9
A textile fabric of an at least three-bar warp knitted construction characterized by a pattern of pleated fabric sections at one face of the fabric, the fabric comprising a plurality of yarns interknitted with one another in stitches arranged in longitudinally extending fabric wales and transversely extending fabric courses, the yarns comprising a set of ground yarns warp knitted in a stitch pattern forming ground stitches in predominantly every wale of predominantly every course, a set of pleat-forming yarns warp knitted predominantly at the face of the fabric opposite the one face in a stitch pattern forming knitted stitches interknitted with the ground stitches of the ground yarns in predominantly every wale of selected groups of successive courses longitudinally spaced-apart by intervening groups of successive courses and forming longitudinal walewise floats unknitted with the ground stitches of the ground yarns in predominantly every wale of every intervening course for causing the ground stitches in the intervening groups of courses to form into pleats at the one face of the fabric between the selected groups of courses, and a set of tie-down yarns warp knitted predominantly at the one face of the fabric in substantially only selected spaced-apart groups of adjacent wales and in a stitch pattern forming longitudinal walewise floats unknitted with the ground stitches of the ground yarns in the intervening groups of courses to extend across and gather the pleats of the ground stitches thereat, thereby defining the pleats of the ground stitches into a pattern of discrete pleated fabric sections arrayed coursewise and walewise over the one face of the fabric.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.