Kids Clothing Manufacturing

For a very long period of the human history, children wore what can be called smaller versions of adult clothing with only a minor differences that can save the kids from any hazard like strings in place of any harmful closure. It was not before early 1800s that specific kids clothing started to be manufactured. Several styles were developed that were meant only for children, such as sailor's suit and the hussar's or Eton jacket. Patterns for children's garments were now extensively made. Different sizes of kids clothing were also introduced. Sewing machine facilitated both, home made as well as factory made children's apparels.

By the later 1800s, styles got typified. Corsets with decorative laces were made for young girls in order to give shape to their waists from early age. Various fashion accessories were also manufactured such as stockings and kids hats. By 1900s, kids clothing manufacturing was a well developed industry. What was most observed while making kids clothes was comfort so that they may move without any problem no matter what they do. Kids sleep wear, kids jeans and every type of fashion clothing was there for them. Development of elastic waistbands led the way to make trousers, skirts and others such kids bottoms trouble free and easy-to-carry by the small kids. Invention of synthetic fabrics and various advanced finishes helped in making kids garments more safe. They were now water resistant, fire resistant, wrinkle free and so on.

Designing of Kids Clothing
Designing and pattern making is the most important part of kids cloth manufacturing. The manufacturers have to keep themselves aware of the inherent risks and hazards to the safety of children. Such features like drawstrings or sharp buttons or other fasteners can pose serious risk to kids' life as also the hazardous textile chemicals (that mostly affect the soft skin of the kids leading to rashes and allergies). To counter all these problems, quality manufacturers always use specialty fabrics like fire-resistant and water proof fabrics. Patterns are selected in such a manner that they do not include risk posing features. Durable fabrics do not get destroyed as fast as the children grow. As such, features like extra-long hems and cuffs are always included in these clothings so that they can be used for longest possible period and then can also be handed down to younger kids.

Materials needed for kids clothing
A shoe consists of sole, insole, outsole, midsole, heel, and vamp (upper). They are the bA very wide range of fabrics is used for making children's garments. Specialty fabrics are always preferred for kids clothing. Some of the kids garments manufacturers design and print the patterns themselves while some others prefer to get it from specialized suppliers. Due to the standardized body shapes of the children, it poses no risk. Other then fabrics, kids clothing also call for various textile accessories and trims for making decorated garments. These may be lace, collars & cuffs, pockets, belts, ribbons, frills, buttons, zippers, snaps, bows, brooches, appliques knee & elbow patches and such other add-ons.

The Manufacturing Process
Kids clothing are made in various steps of cutting, sewing, assembling, decorating, and finishing.

• With the help of spreading machines, fabric is stacked on one another in reaches or lays that may go over 100 ft (30.5 m) long and hundreds of plies (fabric pieces) thick. Markers, made in accordance to the patterns are attached to the fabric with the help of adhesive stripping or staples. Markers are laid in such a way so that minimum possible fabric gets wasted during cutting operation. The fabric is then cut with the help of cloth cutting machines suitable for the type of the cloth. These can be band cutters having similar work method like that of band saws; cutters having rotary blades; machines having reciprocal blades which saw up and down; die clickers similar to die or punch press; or computerized machines that use either blades or laser beams to cut the fabric in desired shapes.
• There are what is called sewing stations for sewing different parts of the cut pieces. In this workplace, there are many operators who perform a single operation. One operator may make only straight seams, while another may make sleeve insets. Yet another two operators can sew the waist seams, and make buttonholes. Various industrial sewing machines too have different types of stitches that they can make. These machines also have different configuration of the frame. Some machines work sequentially and feed their finished step directly into the next machine, while the gang machines have multiple machines performing the same operation supervised by a single operator. All these factors decide what parts of a garment can be sewn at that station.
• Finally, the sewn parts of the garment, such as sleeves or pant legs, are assembled together to give the final form to the kids clothing. The next operations are those of finishing and/or decorating. Molding may be done to change the finished surface of the garment by applying pressure, heat, moisture, or certain other combination. Pressing, pleating and creasing are the basic molding processes. Creasing is mostly done before other finishing processes like that of stitching a cuff. Creasing is also done before decorating the garment with something like a pocket, appliques, embroidered emblems etc. Then the finished garments are sorted based on size and packed.

Although the completed pieces of garments are checked at the quality station, yet it is a continuous process observed during all the manufacturing stages. Textile Machinery used for making kids clothing are also inspected at regular intervals. Most of them have shutoffs built into their structure and operation if they run out of threads or perform below the expected standards.