What is linen fabric? What is the difference between cotton and linen?

What is linen fabric? What is the difference between cotton and linen?

It's the season to wear linen again, although many people resist because linen is easy to wrinkle, but still does not affect our love for it, because linen is really too good for summer!


Linen fiber is derived from the annual herb of flax stems under the epidermal layer of bast fiber, linen fiber is the first natural plant fiber used by mankind, more than 10,000 years of history.


Linen fiber has high strength, moisture absorption, heat dissipation, friction resistance, high temperature resistance, non-flammable, not easy to crack, small conductivity, low dust absorption rate, anti-bacterial health care and other unique advantages, suitable for the production of aircraft wing cloth, military cloth, fire, astronautics, medical and health care clothing and canvas, water hose, interior decorative cloth and craft embroidery products. However, it also has the disadvantages of easy wrinkling, poor dyeing, coarse and hard hand feeling, and poor drapability.

 

The main advantages of flax fiber

1. Good perspiration and breathable effect

Linen fiber natural spindle-shaped structure and unique pectin beveled edge structure so that it has a lot of water absorption, moisture absorption and moisture removal, ventilation and breathable excellent characteristics. Linen fabric can absorb up to twenty percent of its own weight of water, is the same density of the highest fiber fabric.

Linen fabric also absorbs water faster than other materials, and when the linen fabric in contact with the skin can produce the phenomenon of capillary pores, can assist the skin to quickly perspire; linen fiber is formed by the single cell of linen with the aid of gum adhesion together to form a bundle of fibers, there is not much space to store air, the high rate of breathability, thermal conductivity that breathability is also particularly good.


2. Fast heat dissipation and cooling speed

Linen fiber fabrics have excellent temperature regulation function, which is due to the unique structure of linen fiber, its spindle-shaped structure and pectin beveled edge structure so that it can be adjusted in a timely manner with changes in environmental conditions of the human skin surface ecological temperature environment. Because of its warm winter and cool summer characteristics, therefore, linen fiber fabrics are often used as car cushions, short-sleeved T-shirts and other uses, known as "natural air conditioning.


3. Strong anti-bacterial health function

Linen fiber not only has a unique fragrance and fiber structure, but also contains a certain amount of excellent natural antiseptic material silica, these factors make linen fiber has good antibacterial properties, generally dry linen fiber antibacterial ability is very strong, the basic will not occur in mold, unless in extremely warm and humid environment mold will attack the linen fiber.


4. Good anti-static performance

In the anti-static, polyester, nylon and other man-made fibers are the worst, in a dry environment by friction is very easy to generate static electricity, and natural fibers anti-static effect is generally better than man-made fibers, which carry a positive and negative charge close to the balance of linen fiber, anti-static performance is the best, almost no static phenomenon, and even the fabric contains only a small amount of linen fiber, can also play a very good anti-static effect.


5. Good UV protection

A variety of fiber fabrics can be to some extent for the wearer to resist UV damage to the skin, and in a variety of fiber fabrics have not undergone special anti-UV treatment, linen fiber fabric UV protection is the most excellent, which is because linen fiber fabrics contain up to 30% of hemicellulose, can absorb a large number of UV, its protective performance than cotton fibers to be several times higher, can better protect the skin from UV damage.


6. Good flame retardant properties

Linen fiber is the best flame retardant effect of all textile fibers, but also because of this, linen fiber can be widely used in firefighting, aviation, aerospace, architectural decoration and other areas with high requirements for flame retardancy. For example, fire hoses and fire uniforms are made of linen fiber, many hotel rooms are decorated with linen, the biggest factor is to consider from its excellent flame retardant properties.


7. Good anti-allergy properties

Fabric causes human contact allergy is mainly due to the fabric is easy to breed bacteria or adsorption of dust and other allergens, due to the good antibacterial properties of linen fiber, not easy to adsorb dust, so that the wearer effectively avoid contact allergens, is the best clothing fabric for people with sensitive skin, but also the most ideal medical and health materials.

Disadvantages of linen fiber

1. The fabric is easy to wrinkle

Linen fiber is a strong, tough enough natural fiber, but it has no elasticity, other materials in the deformation of the fabric can usually be slowly restored to its original state, only the speed is different, but once the linen fiber fabric deformation for a longer period of time can not be restored to its original state, will produce more obvious folds, affecting its beauty and use.


2. Poor dyeing performance

Textile fabrics have an extremely important process, which is to dye them, the crystallinity and orientation of linen fiber is high, so its fiber swelling difficulties, which directly leads to linen fiber dyeing when the dye is difficult to penetrate into, in addition, linen fiber also contains a large number of impurities such as pectin, these factors lead to linen dyeing on the dyeing rate is not high, uniformity is also poor.


3. Rough fiber, poor flatness of fabric

Linen fiber surface has a lot of hair feathers, resulting in linen fabric surface roughness, if not handled well, will seriously affect the degree of comfort, and even make the wearer a prickly feeling. At the same time, the cross-section of linen fiber is irregular polygonal, so the thickness of linen fiber is particularly uneven, resulting in poor flatness of linen fabric, fabric fiber tightness is also bad.

 

Some of the applications of flax fiber

1. Cool summer clothing

Linen clothing is relatively straight, summer wear very cool, breathable. Linen fiber heat dissipation performance is greatly superior to other types of fibers, in hot weather conditions, wearing linen clothing can make the person's skin surface temperature than wearing other fiber clothing 3-4 ℃ lower, at the same time, linen fiber fabrics can also absorb more sweat, but also be able to quickly sweat out to keep the body dry and comfortable.


2. Interior Decoration Materials

Linen fiber fabric with natural, rustic, simple, natural colors and noble temperament and other advantages, linen decoration is very adaptable to the contemporary interior decoration of popular fashion style, durable, more and more popular in recent years. Linen fabrics are often used as wall coverings, curtains, tablecloths, draperies and indoor apparatus covers, mats, etc., these decorative options made of linen not only become practical living supplies, but also become very artistic crafts, is the highest level of home decoration.

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