Cotton Blend Training Tee

Details

A training tee whose name says blend, so here is the blend, in full, with nothing rounded. The body is 60 percent combed cotton and 40 percent polyester, knitted as single jersey at 180 grams per square metre. The collar rib is a different cloth and a different split: 58 percent cotton, 37 percent polyester and 5 percent elastane. Both lines are printed because rounding the rib away is the exact cheat this page exists to refuse. A rib knitted without elastane will not recover, and the neck goes wavy by the second month, so the elastane is engineering rather than filler. Across the whole garment the elastane works out to about 0.3 percent by mass, because the rib is roughly six percent of a finished tee, and that figure is printed too. The cheat this category runs on is the opposite move. A garment that is 60 percent polyester is sold as cotton, or as cotton-rich with no numbers at all, because once knitted and dyed nobody can tell by hand. The split is settled by chemical separation to ISO 1833, which dissolves the cotton out of a weighed sample and weighs the polyester left behind, and it is run on every lot. Why the polyester is in it: cotton holds about seven times its own weight in water and then sits wet against you for an hour. Polyester holds under one percent and moves it along the fibre instead. At 60 to 40 this dries in about 45 minutes in shade where the same weight in pure cotton takes over two hours. Full polyester dries faster still and holds body odour far longer, because the bacteria that make the smell bind to a water-hating fibre and a cold wash does not shift them. Sixty forty is the working middle, and the name says so on the front of the page.

• Body 60 percent combed cotton, 40 percent polyester, by ISO 1833 separation
• Collar rib 58 percent cotton, 37 percent polyester, 5 percent elastane, printed separately
• Whole garment about 0.3 percent elastane by mass, because the rib is about six percent of it
• 180 GSM measured on a cut disc from the finished roll, IS 1964, not quoted from the yarn
• Under 3 percent residual shrinkage after five washes, ISO 6330
• Flatlock seams throughout, so a strap does not chafe a ridge into your shoulder
• Shoulder seam set back off the joint, internal taping at the collar
• Side seamed rather than tubular, so it does not twist in the wash
• Azo-free below 30 mg per kg on the restricted amines, ISO 14362-1
• No printed logo, no mesh panel inserts, no fusible tape to lift
• Do not use fabric softener. It coats the fibre, kills the moisture transport the polyester is there for, and you will have paid for a blend that behaves like a wet cotton tee.