Quarter-Turned
Trade — one of 3 in the glossary
A garment cut so that the crease left by tubular knitting falls at the side of the body rather than down the centre front. Fabric knitted as a tube is flattened for finishing and storage, and that flattening leaves a fold line; quarter-turning rotates the pattern piece a quarter of the way round the tube so the fold ends up where nobody looks.
A fold you cannot press out
Tubular fabric is knitted as a cylinder and then flattened onto a roll. Flattening a cylinder makes two fold lines running the length of it.
Those folds set, and on some fabrics they remain faintly visible after the garment is made. On a centre-front crease that is exactly where a print goes.
Quarter-turning simply rotates where the pattern is laid on the tube, so the fold falls at the side seam line instead of the middle of the chest.
Only on tubular garments
A side-seamed garment is cut from flat panels, so there is no tube and no fold to move. The term only arises on tubular construction.
That makes it a useful signal in itself: a spec sheet advertising quarter-turning is telling you the body is tubular.
It costs nothing but attention in the cutting room, which is why good tubular blanks do it and cheap ones sometimes do not.
Why a decorator cares
A crease down the centre front is directly under a chest print. Ink lands unevenly across it and the fold can show through a light deposit.
It also makes squaring the garment on a platen harder, because the natural fold is not where the operator expects.
If you are printing on tubular blanks at volume, quarter-turned is worth specifying.
Common questions
- What does quarter-turned mean on a t-shirt?
- That the garment was cut so the fold line left by flattening tubular fabric falls at the side rather than down the centre front, where a print would sit on it.
- Why do some t-shirts have a crease down the front?
- Because tubular fabric is flattened onto a roll, leaving fold lines that can set. Quarter-turning moves that fold to the side; without it, it can end up centre front.
- Do side-seamed shirts need quarter-turning?
- No. They are cut from flat panels rather than a tube, so there is no fold line to move. The term only applies to tubular garments.
See also
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