You call that a textile?

June 9, 2022  |  My Take

It took me a while to embrace the larger industrial textiles world and get comfortable understanding them – all of them – as “textiles” (or “fabrics,” but that discussion will be for another time). What we may call traditional markets, such as awnings and canopies, tents and architectura…
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Nothing ventured, nothing gained

May 9, 2022  |  My Take

I don’t consider myself risk averse, generally, but I don’t have a burning desire to jump out of an airplane, either. I have, however, written a genre-blended book that is difficult to classify. A publisher is going to have to know how to pitch it to book sellers, who must know where to shelve i…
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Getting to know you and what you do

April 11, 2022  |  My Take

The first Smart Fabrics Summit was co-sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce and held in Washington, D.C. in April 2016. It brought together participants that typically do not talk to each other. That’s not because they don’t like each other; it was simply because they do different things and d…
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What? No polyester pants suit?

March 14, 2022  |  My Take

There are those of us for whom “polyester pants suit” conjures up images of the “leisure suit,” designed to offer men (and the women, at the time, who did the laundry) a practical alternative to The Suit. These suits refused to wrinkle, wore like iron and gave the wearer a casual air, withou…
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When “disruptive” is a good word

February 3, 2022  |  My Take

by Janet Preus When I was a teacher, the word “disruptive” was usually attached to a student who had interrupted the flow of a lesson or class activity with inappropriate behavior. With sometimes as many as 30 or more students, all trying to accomplish the same thing at the same time, one studen…
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Doing business with China

January 10, 2022  |  My Take

by Janet Preus I’ve learned a lot about the textile industry during my time at IFAI. I feel especially good about becoming conversant, at least, in the advanced textiles arena. There are other issues of importance to the textile industry, however, where I am fundamentally lost.  Such as inter…
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Hot and cold

December 13, 2021  |  My Take

by Janet Preus The level of thermal management possible in textiles today is, quite literally, out of this world. The requirements of NASA and other enterprises venturing beyond earth have driven development of extraordinary materials that tolerate the extreme environment in Space.  But for most of…
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Way outside the box

November 8, 2021  |  My Take

by Janet Preus “My mind is blown,” said one attendee. I’m sure others might have said the same thing, but as she is already a force in the advanced textiles industry, just her saying it blew my mind, too. It followed a presentation that may have been the most novel I’ve seen at Expo since &h…
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Using what’s available

October 11, 2021  |  My Take

By Janet Preus Scientists know that the body generates a lot of energy, and if that energy could be harvested efficiently, a person could conceivably provide the energy needed to power devices he or she is carrying. For workers in the field, warfighters, athletes, people with medical conditions and …
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Catching up with nature

September 27, 2021  |  My Take

by Janet Preus A relatively new success story in the world of advanced textiles is that of phase change materials. They’ve even earned their own acronym – PCMs, which, in fact covers quite a range of materials designed to provide specific functionalities by responding to various environmental co…
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