In reply to Dorcas "I see no reason why speedos have to be a boring one color unless it.s white or yellow with a reat tan,!"
To make a boring one colour suit the mill sets up a power loom running with pre-dyed lycra thread and runs it continuously, stopping only to replace thread reels.
To make a plaid or tartan fabric, coloured threads are placed on a loom and a "program" run to send across the correct colour shuttles in the right order. I don't know of anyone who has actually produced plain or tartan lycra by this method.
Patterned lycra is usually made by printing on white lycra fabric made on a power loom as above. Rollers for each colour to be used have the pattern cut into them and run continuously as the fabric passes beneath it.
Multicoloured lycra swimwear can be made by stitching sections of different coloured lycra together. The Speedo did this with hip flashes on their nylon suits before they went over to lycra but dropped the idea in favour of printed suits for added colour. The Japanese have been doing coloured section suits recently. The problem with making these suits is to correctly stretch the fabric at the time that it is sewn. If the fabric is not stretched correctly the seam will be too loose or too tight when the suit is worn making it look wrong. The multi colour section suit takes skill and time to make and is liable to be expensive.
To add colour and interest to a plain suit, silk screen printing and "stretch inks" can be used. Acetate transparencies can be printed on a bubblejet printer then burned onto the screen using photosensitive emulsions. It produces a stencil effect and is an area that I want to experiment with.
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