Silk, known as “the queen of fibers”, was once an exclusive material of the Chinese imperial family for its luster, wearing comfort ability, and special scrooping. Now, silk is used ordinary people’s homes as pajamas, shirts, evening dress, furnishings, and wall coverings. These products need different level of flame retardancy according to the fire regulations. Because textiles are easier to ignite than others, they account for 20% of dwelling fires and 50% of fatalities [2].When fire accidents occur, the primary hazard is ignition of clothing by contact with hot surfaces or small open-flame sources. So fabric with good flame retardant character should be chosen for garments to reduce unreasonable risk of burn injuries and deaths from fires associated with clothing.
It is also important for people, especially the children and the elderly, to have more time to escape. Presently, many related regulations have been enacted around the world to state the flammability performance and standardize testing methods for flammability of textiles such as S.I.1985 No 2043 Nightwear (safety) Regulations of United Kingdom and CFR 1610 Standard for the flammability of clothing textiles in the United States of America.
Flame retardancy treatment of silk fabric by immersion in a mixture of borax and boric acid solution can be traced back some 200 years [5]. Crosslinking by introducing N-hydroxymethyl (3-dimethyl phosphono) propionamide and trimethylolmelamine (TMM) or hexamethylol melamine (HMM) onto silk fabric can improve laundering durability to 30~50 hand wash cycles, and the LOI of treated silk fabric were above 30%. But the treated silk fabrics would become stiff and yellow and had the problem of formaldehyde releases.Developing a durable flame retardancy and formaldehyde-free process for silk fabric is still a challenge. Recently, we successfully synthesized a series of phosphorous-based flame retardants and applied them to silk fabrics to produce durable and formaldehyde free effects [8-10]. However, little research on the properties of apparel and sewing ability for silk fabrics after being treated with flame retardant has been reported in the literature. Such parameters are very imperative for garment manufacturers. This paper reports detailed research to explore the mechanical properties and sewing ability of flame retardant silk fabrics.
