APPAREL DICTIONARY - C -

Canvas
A heavy, closely woven fabric of cotton, hemp, or flax; originally used for making tents and sails.

Cami Strap
Very narrow shoulder straps.

Cap Button
The bottom button at the top of a baseball style cap that helps to hold all of the panels together.

Cap Sleeves
Sleeve type usually in women's styles but is also used in unisex styles. Standard T-shirt sleeve length is approximately to the elbow. Cap sleeves would fall midway between the elbow and the shoulder.

Carding
A fiber cleaning process in yarn spinning. Preliminary process in yarn spinning. Fibers are separated and made into more parallel-untwisted strand called SLIVERS. This process also removes most of the impurities and a certain amount of short or broken fibers.

Carded Cotton
Yarn that has been cleaned aligned and formed into a continuous untwisted strand but has not gone through additional spinning processes like combing or ring spinning.

Cargo Pockets
Large expandable pockets sewn to the shell with side pleats.

Casual Micro-fiber
100% Polyester Micro fiber fabric that is water repellent and wind resistant.

Cavalry Twill
A type of twill weave.

Center line/Center Crease
Helps line up garment for screen print or embroidery. Disadvantage: if line is not actually centered, it is more difficult to center a embroidered design.

Chambray
A dressier fabric woven with white threads across colored threads. A broad class of plain weave, yarn dyed, cotton or synthetic fabrics made with a colored yarn and white filling.

Chamois Twill
An adjective used to identify a heavily brushed twill fabric.

Chevron
A zigzag stitch that is similar to a Herringbone pattern.

Cire Nylon
Lustrous surface effect produced on the surface of a fabric.

Canvas
A heavy, closely woven fabric of cotton, hemp, or flax; originally used for making tents and sails.

Clean Finished Placket
Typically the interfacing of plackets are raw or edged, which means they can look ragged or uneven, particularly on light colored shirts. By cutting the interfacing in a rectangle, turning the edges under and fusing them in place, we have a straight placket with no raw edges. All that shows inside the shirt is about ¼ inch of the smooth edge.

Clean Finished Self-Shell
When garment seams are finished, not raw with any lining.

Clean Finished Vents
Clean finished vents are formed by turning all raw edges under in a double fold and then stitching with a single needle. This has no functional purpose but gives a neater appearance.

Color Blocking
Merchandising and/or cutting term, whereby a certain stripe or block of color ends up in the same place every time on the finish garment.

Combed Cotton
Cotton yarn that has been combed to remove short fibers, and to straighten or arrange longer fibers in parallel order resulting in a smooth yarn used in finer garments.

Compacting
A thermo-mechanical process whereby fabric is processed through two sets of rollers along with steam heat and pressure to squeeze the threads together, thus reducing shrinkage.

Cool Max
Channeled fiber from DuPont to take moisture away from the skin, made of polyester fiber.

Cover
(Cap) The front, back and tip of a crown when it is sewn together.

Crew Collar
A rounded, ribbed collar cut close to the neck.

Crocking
Crocking refers to the tendency of pigment-dyed shirt to lose some of the pigment on the surface of the shirt from regular wear and washing. Crocking gives the shirt its desired, weathered look.

Crop Top
A shirt style made to expose midriff.

Cross Stitch Buttons
Attaching a four hole button by stitching diagonally across forming an 'X'. This adds strength and stability and is aesthetically more appealing.

Crown
(Cap) The uppermost part of a cap or hat that is sewn to either a hat band, brim or sweat band. Visors do not have crowns, only front panels.