Torque (Garment Twist)

Torque shows up when the yarns spun into a knit fabric still carry twist energy that finishing didn't fully neutralize. Cut and sewn into a tube, that stored energy releases slowly through washing and drying, and the whole cylinder of fabric rotates a few degrees each cycle. On a finished tee that means the side seam, which started running straight from underarm to hem, walks forward or backward around the body — sometimes several inches after five or six home washes. Mills test for it as spirality, usually expressed as a percentage measured under AATCC 179.

Tubular-knit tees built from cheaper open-end cotton show it worst, since the fabric is finished as a closed loop with less mechanical stabilization than open-width goods. We had a customer call convinced our press had printed a chest logo crooked — the shirt had actually twisted a full seam's width after three washes, and the print, dead center on day one, now looked like it was sliding off the shoulder. Nothing wrong with the registration; that's torque doing exactly what it does after a few trips through the wash.

For any order where alignment matters after repeated washing — team jerseys, uniform programs, anything worn weekly for a season — spec a side-seamed or compacted-knit blank instead of a plain tubular budget tee prone to torque, and ask the mill for a spirality number under 5%. It costs a little more per unit and saves the reprint.

The mistake buyers make is blaming the printer for a crooked design when the shirt has simply developed torque in the wash. If a print was straight at drop-off and crooked weeks later, check the side seam against the underarm before assuming anything about the press.