After spending some time de-pinning and unfolding a batch of four new shirts (a once a year thing) I pondered anew about the bulb-headed pins used to attach shirts to the cardboard isert, to the plastic neckbands and to hold the various folds in place. My wife wants me to throw them all away, claiming they aren’t any good for sewing.
So why do manufacturers keep on using them instead of the more useful flat headed pins? Cost? Less snagging of fabric?
I had no luck in the archives and searched the forums in the titles using “*pin” and got 56 hits with losts of “fixin” or “jumpin” in the titles but nothing about this subject, so I’m throwing it open to the hotdogs of the SDMB. Many thanks for your consideration
Ok, that’s something I never considered while I worked for the apparel manufacturer. There seem to be several options though, but I bet the biggest consideration comes down to cost.
Potential for rusting: doubtful - I’ve never seen one of those pins rusted.
Ease of use: maybe - the bigger head of the pin could be easier to grasp.
Cost: not of the pin itself, but of the labor. If #2 comes into play and it’s easier to grasp the pin with the slightly larger head, that means the pinning is a quicker process, and the employee pinning and folding the shirts can process more in a day, reducing the need for an additional employee and the the cost to the manufacturer.
The requirements of the customer: These are a BIG deal. If the customer wants it that way and it’s a fairly important customer, they’re going to get it that way or the manufacturer will have to deal with the repercussions.
Those are the potential reasons I can see - I’d bet it’s a combination of #3 and #4.
Growf??? I’m in the SCA, so just about everybody I know sews; some of them are professional seamstress and seamsters, and the all swear by this style of pin–the bigger the handle, the better. Most of them use pins with balls on the end the size of a BB, and it’s to make them easier to grab.
Why does your wife not want them for sewing? When sewing, it is important to remove the pin easily, that’s why they have the squared off head, you can grip them easily for removal. The bulb head is much more difficult to grasp and therefore, harder to remove, and less useful for sewing.
The pins in your shirt, however, are designed to stay in place, therefore the difficult removal property of the bulb pin is an asset, it is less likely to come loose during handling.
On preview, the bulb shape I’m referring to is like a small teardrop shape on the end of the pin, not a spherical shape. I personally find the teardrop rather difficult to grasp.
In the shirt manufacture/ packaging/ shipping/ storage/ selling process the folded shirt might easily get squished from above (say, if it is at the bottom of a pile of other shirts). A flat-headed pin might gouge a little dimple – maybe even a hole – into the surrounding fabric. A bulb-headed pin probably would not.
As a flat-headed pin gets inserted its head can scratch the fabric. This might leave a permanent mark or run on some fabrics (silk?).
Pins with round, plastic (usually white) heads are easy to spot while de-pinning a shirt. Nothing’s worse than missing a pin and risking being stuck or ripping the shirt.
Most pins are comprised of stainless steel, thereby never rusting on to the garment or work-in-progress which sits in your sewing basket for a year (yeah, yeah). The plastic end is a godsend, I toss small-headed pins whenever I come across them in my pin box. I don’t like to have to work at it when I’m going along sewing a mile a minute, and the bulb-headed (also referred to as “Quilters pins”) pins come out easily.
They are a pain when you are pressing a garment while sewing. As every good seamstress will tell you, you must press the fabric before cutting the pattern and after sewing each seam, you press the seam open or to the side if speedily piecing a quilt-top. Plastic melts. I’ve only melted one pin, and that was because I mistakenly left it in while sewing.