When garments, such as shirts, jackets and other items that fit about the upper portion of the human body are to be pressed or otherwise to have the wrinkles, folds, etc. removed from the garment, one of the more common procedures is to expand the garment with air and/or steam so as to tend to lightly stretch the fabric of the garment, which tends to open the wrinkles, folds, etc. in the fabric, and the steam tends to soften or relax the material. After this step, dry cool air can be passed through the garment, causing the yarns to become fixed in their straightened configuration.
In the past, one of the common procedures for accomplishing the above described steps was to drape a garment about an inflatable porous bag and then introduce steam and air into the bag. This tends to inflate the bag out against the garment, thereby inflating the garment to its full girth, and the passage of steam through the material of the bag and then through the material of the garment accomplished the relaxing of the yarns, and the subsequent passage of cool dry air through the bag and the garment would tend to cause the yarns to assume the new, flat or "pressed" configuration.
While the above noted procedures have been successful and have been practiced for a long time, one of the problems is that the garments are distended primarily only laterally, with very little, if any, vertical distending occurring during the process. Further, the steam and air is required to pass through multiple layers of material, both the bag material and the material of the garment, with the bag material being inflated out in abutment with the garment material. This abutting relationship of the two materials tends to create a somewhat impervious barrier to the steam and air. This barrier to the flow of air and steam causes a low rate of movement of steam and air through the garment for a given steam and air pressure and requires too much time for each pressing cycle, or too much inflating pressure to be applied to the garments to reduce the cycle time. This tends to result in excessive lateral stretching of the garment, sometimes causing folds or wrinkles to appear in the garment during the steaming step and subsequent air supply step.
The application of primarily only lateral forces to the garment with steam and air inflation further tends to cause some garments to become enlarged laterally after the "pressing" procedures. However, if the garments were distended both laterally and vertically during the steaming and airing process, the garment would tend to more accurately hold its original shape during the process, resulting in substantially no change in configuration upon completion of the process.