the future of latex. even tighter fitting and no more wrinkles.

[petrolio]

I was reading a pdf on "lines of non-extension" when I realised that when applied to latex garments it might produce some interesting results.

relevant quote from the pdf:

The garment leaves the wearer with a sense of its presence at all times, even under pressure, but without any noticeable constraint to any body movement, and with no bunching of the material. The garment feels like a second skin that conforms to the body and that deforms naturally with the body. Even though the material is nonextensible, the garment feels like a stretchy garment that completely conforms to the body by stretching and shrinking without wrinkling.

lines of non-extension are curved lines you can draw on the human body that don't change length when moving the body. once you have a mapping of these lines it's almost trivial to embed high-strength non stretching fibers into the clothing along these lines, which will keep the garment close to the skin.

so anyone have any thoughts on this? anyone with a sewing machine should be able to implement something like this, except for the mapping of the lines, which I haven't found a good source on yet.

you can find the PDF I have been reading here: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/610519.pdf

[Tinker D]

What an interesting idea. The material would have to be very stretchy indeed. But if I'm hearing you right, then it's the way the material is stitched in a pattern of sorts.
Is that right?

[petrolio]

the material is stitched in a pattern of sorts.
Is that right?

that's one way of doing it. you basically make the fabric selectively *not* stretchy.

you can do this selective nonstretching by either sewing a half stretch fabric into a complex pattern, or by sewing a full stretch fabric with a highly nonstretchy yarn. carbon fibre would work excelently.

basically anyone with a sewing machine should be able to do this, as long as you can aquire a map of these LONES. sadly the mapping is the bit I haven't found a lot of information on yet.