SAILCLOTH: Any heavy, strongly made woven canvas of cotton, linen, jute, polyester, nylon, aramid, etc., that is used for sails. Laminated fabrics are also finding use in this market. Sailcloth is used for apparel, particularly sportswear.
SAND: Used as a filter medium in fiber manufacture, particularly used in spinning packs for nylon or polyester production.
SANDWICH BLEND: A method of preparing fiber mixtures by layering them horizontally in alternating layers with all elements in the proper proportion. Vertical sections are cut and fed to the next machine in the process, where blending is effected.

SANFORIZED®: A trademark of Cluett, Peabody & Co., Inc., denoting a controlled standard of shrinkage performance. Fabrics bearing this trademark will not shrink more than 1% because they have been subjected to a method of compressive shrinkage involving feeding the fabric between a stretched blanket and a heated shoe. When the blanket is allowed to retract, the cloth is physically forced to comply.
SANFOR-SET®: A trademark of Cluett, Peabody & Co., Inc., denoting a controlled standard of shrinkage performance originally developed for denims. Fabrics bearing this trademark will not shrink under home-wash, tumble-dry conditions because they have been subjected to a liquid ammonia treatment and compressive shrinkage.

SAPONIFICATION: Specifically in relation to manufactured fibers, saponification is the process of removing part or all of the groups from acetate or triacetate fiber, leaving regenerated cellulose.
SARAN FIBER: A manufactured fiber in which the fiber-forming substance is any long chain synthetic polymer composed of at least 80% by weight of vinylidene chloride units (-CH2-CCl2-) (FTC definition). Saran fiber has excellent resistance to sunlight and weathering and is used in lawn furniture, upholstery, and carpets.
SASE: Acronym for stress at specified elongation; the stress experienced by a yarn or cord at a given elongation.
SATEEN: A cotton fabric made in a satin weave.
SATIN WEAVE: One of the basic weaves, plain, satin, and twill. The face of the fabric consists almost completely of warp or filling floats produced in the repeat of the weave. The points of intersection are distributed evenly and widely separated as possible. Satin-weave fabric has a characteristic smooth, lustrous surface and has a considerably greater number of yarns in the set of threads, either warp or filling, that forms the face than in the other set.

SATURATION: 1. The maximum intensity or purity of a color. If the color is as brilliant as possible, it is at saturation; if the color is subdued or grayed, it is dull, weak, and low in intensity. 2. The upper limit concentration of a solute in a solvent, i.e., no more solute can be dissolved at a fixed temperature and pressure.
SATURATION BONDING: See BONDING, 2.
SATURATION VALUE: The maximum amount of dye that can be absorbed by a textile fiber under defined conditions.
SAXONY: 1. A high-grade fabric for coats, made from Saxony Merino wool. 2. A soft woolen with fancy yarn effects, used in sport-coat fabric. 3. A highly twisted worsted knitting yarn. 4. A term describing a cut-pile carpet having highly twisted, evenly sheared, medium-length pile yarns.
SALLOPED SELVAGE: A fabric defect consisting of an abrupt, narrow place along the selvage. Principal cause is the failure of the clip on the tenter frame to engage or hold the fabric.
SCHAPPE: A yarn from partly degummed silk waste.
SCORCHING: The tendering of a fiber surface by heat so as to change the color and texture of the surface.
SCOURING: An operation to remove the sizing and tint used on the warp yarn in weaving and, in general, to clean the fabric prior to dyeing.
SCREEN: 1. A hollow, cylindrical, coarse-mesh wire device used in pickers and certain openers to form the loose staple stock into a sheet, or lap. The screen is mounted horizontally on a shaft on which it revolves freely. 2. A stencil used in screen printing. It is made of fine cloth, usually of silk or nylon, finely perforated in areas to form a design and mounted on a frame. The paste containing the dye is forced through the perforations onto the fabric, leaving the design. A series of screens, one for each color, is used for multicolored designs. (Also see PRINTING.)
SCREEN PRINTING: See PRINTING.
SCREW FEEDS: Feed systems in which the action of the screw generates pressure that causes flow. The system usually consists of a container with a closely fitting screw unit.
SCREW MELTER: 1. Screw extruder in which frictional forces between the screw and the heated barrel contribute to rapid melting of solid polymer. This configuration is capable of high throughput. 2. System in which a screw feed is used to feed polymer to a melt grid and to maintain a constant pressure at the grid.

SCRIM: 1. A lightweight, open-weave, coarse fabric; the best qualities are made with two-ply yarns. Cotton scrim usually comes in white, cream, or ecru and is used for window curtains and as backing for carpets. 2. Fabric with open construction used as base fabric in the production of coated or laminated fabrics.
SCROOP: The sound of rustle or crunch that is characteristic of silk. Scroop is a natural property of silk, but may be induced in other fabrics to a degree by various treatments.
SCULPTURED: A term describing a carpet with areas of contrasting depth produced by mixing cut pile and loops.
SEAMING: Joining the overlap of two pieces of fabric, usually near their edges.
SEAMLESS: A term that describes a tubular knit fabric without seams, e.g., seamless hosiery.
SEAM MARK: A particular type of pressure mark in the finished fabric. It is produced during finishing operations by the thickness of the seam used to join pieces for processing.
SEAM SLIPPAGE: A defect consisting of separated yarns occurring when sewn fabrics pull apart at the seams. Seam slippage is more prone to occur in smooth-yarn fabrics produced from manufactured filament yarns.
SEAM WELDING: Any stitchless procedure for joining fabrics based on the use of thermoplastic resins or the direct welding of thermoplastic materials. Seam welding is an alternative to conventional needle-and-thread seaming operations that is extremely popular in the nonwoven field.
SECANT MODULUS: The ratio of change in stress to change in strain between two points on a stress-strain diagram, particularly the points of zero stress and breaking stress.
SECONDARY BACKING: A layer of material, usually woven jute, polypropylene, vinyl, or latex foam, laminated to the underside of a carpet to improve body and dimensional stability.
SECONDARY COLORS: Green, orange, and violet, each of which is obtained by mixing two primary colors.
SECONDARY CREEP: The nonrecoverable component of creep. (Also see DELAYED DEFORMATION.)
SECOND-ORDER TRANSITION TEMPERATURE: The temperature at which the noncrystalline (amorphous) portions of polymer melt or become plastic. An inflection point or change is stress-strain properties occurs at this point; however, for most fibers, this change is small.
SECONDS: 1. Imperfect fabrics (woven or knitted) containing flaws in the weave, finish, or dyeing, and sold as “seconds.” 2. See YARN QUALITY.
SECTION BEAM: 1. A large, flanged roll upon which warp yarn is wound at the beam warper in preparation for slashing. 2. Small flanged or unflanged beams assembled side-by-side on the shaft of a warp beam for further processing.
SECTION MARK: A fabric defect consisting of marks running warpwise in an evenly repeating pattern, caused by the improper setting of sections in silk system (or indirect) warping.
SEERSUCKER: Lightweight fabric, made of cotton or manufactured fiber, having crinkled stripes made by weaving some of the warp threads slack and others tight. Woven seersucker is more expensive than imitations made by chemical treatment.
SELF-TWIST YARN: An inherently twist-stable, two-ply structure having a ply twist that is alternately S- and Z-directed along the yarn.
SELVAGE or SELVEDGE: The narrow edge of woven fabric that runs parallel to the warp. It is made with stronger yarns in a tighter construction than the body of the fabric to prevent raveling. A fast selvage encloses all or part of the picks, and a selvage is not fast when the filling threads are cut at the fabric edge after every pick.
SEQUESTRANT: Any compound that will inactivate a metallic ion by forming a water-soluble complex in which the metal is held in a nonionizable form. This results in prevention of the usual precipitation reactions of the metal.
SERGE: Any smooth-faced cloth made with a two-up and two-down twill weave.
SERGING: 1. Overcasting the cut edge of a fabric to prevent raveling. 2. Finishing the edge of a carpet by oversewing rather than binding. Generally, the sides of a carpet are serged and the ends bound.
SERICIN: Silk gum. The gelatinous protein that cements the fibroin filaments in a silk fiber. Itb is removed in the process called degumming.
SERVED YARN: In aerospace textiles, a reinforcing yarn such as graphite or glass around which two different yarns are wound, i.e., one in the Z direction and one in the S direction, etc., for protection or compaction of the yarn bundle.

SET MARK: A fabric defect consisting of narrow bars or bands across the full width of the fabric that may appear either as a tight, loose, or corduroy effect caused by loom stops improperly reset by the weaver. Set marks are sometimes caused by the weaver ripping out filling yarn and then not properly adjusting the pick wheel to obtain the proper relation between the fell of the cloth and the reed.
SET POINT: An input in process control that defines the desired value or range of values of the variable that is being controlled.
SET YARNS: False-twist yarns stabilized to produce bulk.
SEWING THREAD: See THREAD.
SEYDEL CONVERTER: Tow-to-top processing equipment. Seydel combines the prestretching and breaking process in one machine.
S-FINISHING: A finishing process applied to acetate and triacetate fabrics using a sodium hydroxide solution to give surface saponification; i.e., the fiber “skin” is converted to cellulose. It improves the hand and reduces the tendency to acquire a static charge.
SHADE BAR: See MIXED END and FILLING.
SHADECLOTH: A plain-weave cotton or linen fabric that is heavily sized and is often given oil treatment to make it opaque. The fabric is used for curtains and shades.
SHADED FILLING: A defect consisting of a bar running across the fabric caused by a difference in appearance of the filling yarn, and occurring at a quill change or knot.
SHADING: In cut-pile fabrics, an apparent change in color when the pile is bent, caused by differences in the way light is reflected off the bent fibers. This phenomenon is a characteristic of pile fabrics, not a defect.
SHADOW PRINTING: See PRINTING, Warp Printing.
SHAFT: 1. A term often used with reference to satins indicating the number of harnesses employed to produce the weave. 2. See HARNESS.
SHAFT MARK: A fabric defect characterized by a number of floating ends, usually caused by a broken harness strap on the loom.
SHAG CARPET: A loosely tufted carpet construction with cut pile 1 to 5 inches in length and with greater than normal spacing between tufts.
SHANTUNG: Plain-weave fabric with unevenly ribbed surface and crisp texture.
SHARKSKIN: 1. A hard-finished, twill fabric, woolen or worsted, made of simple weaves with a two-color arrangement of warp and filling yarns. 2. A plain-weave sportswear fabric made of dull-luster acetate or triacetate yarns.
SHEARING: ```A dry finishing operation in which projecting fibers are mechanically cut or trimmed from the face of the fabric. Woolen and worsted fabrics are almost always sheared. Shearing is also widely employed on other fabrics, especially on napped and pile fabrics where the amount varies according to the desired height of the nap or pile. For flat-finished fabrics such as gabardine, a very close shearing is given.
SHEATH-CORE FIBERS: Bicomponent fibers of either two polymer types, or two variants of the same polymer. One polymer forms a core and the other surrounds it as a sheath.

SHED: A path through and perpendicular to the warp in the loom. It is formed by raising some warp threads by means of their harnesses while others are left down. The shuttle passes through the shed to insert the filling.
SHEDDING: 1. The operation of forming a shed in weaving. 2. A loss of nominal length staple at any process in a staple yarn plant.
SHEERS: Transparent, lightweight fabrics of different constructions and yarns, especially those of silk and manufactured fibers. Examples are chiffons, some crepes, georgette, and voile.
SHIER: A short length of a single pick that appears to be cut out of the plane of the fabric.
SHINER: A relatively short streak caused by a lustrous section of a filament yarn. The principal cause is excessive tension applied to a yarn during processing.
SHIRE: See SHIER.
SHOE FOLD: A manner of folding fabric. The piece is folded from both ends into twelve or sixteen folds. The length of the fold depends upon the length of the piece.
SHOGGED STITCH: See RACKED STITCH.
SHORT-CUT STAPLE: Staple fiber less than 0.75-ingh long. Typically used in wet-laid nonwoven processes to make fabrics, or as reinforcement in plastics, concrete, asphalt, and other materials.
SHORT-LIQUOR DYEING: See DYEING.
SHOT: In woven pile floor coverings, the number of filling yarns per row of tufts.
SHREDDING: The separation of compressed fibers in pulp sheets prior to acetylation in acetate manufacture.
SHRINKAGE: Widthwise or lengthwise contraction of a fiber, yarn, or fabric, usually after wetting a redrying or on exposure to elevated temperature.
SHRINKAGE FORCE: The force generated by thermoplastic materials when they are subjected to elevated temperatures.
SHUTTLE: A boat-shaped device, usually made of wood with a metal tip that carries filling yarns through the shed in the weaving process. It is the most common weft-insertion device. The shuttle holds a quill, or pirn, on which the filling yarn is wound. It is equipped with an eyelet at one end to control rate. The filling yarn is furnished during the weaving operation.

SHUTTLE CHAFE MARK: A fabric defect that is usually seen as groups of short, fine lines across the fabric, often running for some distance in the piece and usually in the same area. Although these marks run in the direction of the filling, they are actually caused by the shuttle rubbing across and damaging the warp ends, producing a dull, chalky appearance.

SHUTTLELESS LOOM: A loom in which some device other then a shuttle is used for weft insertion. (Also see LOOM and WEFT INSERTION.)
SILICONE: One of a group of polymeric organic silicon compounds obtained as oils, greases, or plastics and applied to textile material as water- and heat-resistant lubricants and finishes.
SILK FIBER: A fine, strong, continuous filament produced by the larva of certain insects, especially the silkworm, when constructing its cocoons. The silkworm secretes the silk as a viscous fluid from two large glands in the lateral part of the body. The fluid is extruded through a common spinneret to form a double filament cemented together. This double silk filament, which is composed of the protein fibroin, ranges in size from 1.75 to 4.0 denier, depending upon the species of worm and the country of origin. The filament of the cocoon is softened and loosened by immersion in warm water and is then reeled off. Although raw silk contains 20 to 30% of sericin, or silk glue, and is harsh and stiff, silk is soft and white when all of the glue has been removed by steeping and boiling in soap baths. Ecru is harsher, as it has only about 5% of the sericin removed. Silk is noted for its strength, resiliency, and elasticity. The major sources of commercial silk are Japan and China.
SIMULATED SPUN YARNS: Filament yarns that have been modified to have aesthetics similar to those of spun yarns. Simulated spun yarn have looped or hairy surfaces.
SINGEING: The process of burning off protruding fibers from yarn or fabric by passing it over a flame or heated copper plates. Singeing gives the