**1. Introduction**

In terms of comfort and exuberant use, cotton fibre is considered the most classical fibre in garment technology. Versatility of cotton fibres ranging from very finer to very courser and structure of cotton yarns such as single to ply are considered as decisive factors of selection regarding their use in apparel production. On the other hand, the comfort property, being one of the prime features of woven fabric used as a garment, is greatly influenced by the structure of constituent yarns in that particular fabric. Comfort evaluation includes mainly vapour and liquid transmission properties of yarn and fabric at constant atmospheric conditions and constraints. Liquid transmission includes water absorbency and wicking [1, 2].

Absorbency is used to describe the ability of a fabric to take in moisture—an important feature that influences a variety of other factors such as skin comfort, static build-up, shrinkage, water repellency and wrinkle recovery. One of the most common occurrences in the manufacturing and usage of textile materials is liquid flow. Wicking is the spontaneous transfer of a liquid into a porous structure caused by capillary forces. Therefore, study of capillary flow in textile media is very important. When the free energy of the solid-gas interface surpasses that of the solid-liquid interface, capillary phenomena occur. A liquid that does not wet fibres cannot wick into a fabric, and wicking can only take place when fibres are assembled with capillary spaces. But the objective of this is to present an overview only in wicking property of textiles.

Study of wicking in textile material is of great interest for two main reasons. Firstly, it allows a better understanding of liquid-fibre contact in order to characterise any liquid flow of spin finishes, dyeing or coating of either fabrics or yarns. Secondly, it enables the characterisation of textile structures, their porosity resulting from the capillaries formed by the inter-filament spaces in which the liquid flows [3]. Moisture absorption is intimately linked to the comfort of garments made from cellulosic fibres. The term wetting is usually used to describe the displacement of solid-air interface with solid liquid interface. Wetting behaviour is commonly characterised by the value of the contact angle within the liquid [4]. The wetting and wicking behaviour of the fibrous structure is a critical aspect of performance of products such as sports clothes, hygiene disposable materials and medical products. Clothing comfort is influenced by the wetting and wicking processes that occur during wear.

Therefore, a thorough understanding of liquid transmission behaviour inside various intermediate forms of textiles is obviously needed through absorbency and wicking phenomena of yarns and fabrics. As the yarns are composed of fibres with a structured arrangement, any change of this arrangement by twisting and plying creates different sort of wicking behaviour on them and in turn, the fabrics made out of these yarns along with its varying weave forms and directions must exhibit different nature of wicking effects. The findings that are interlinking between fabric wicking and corresponding yarn wicking are always a matter of interest to study the nature of absorbency specially for textiles made out of natural fibres and hence, are elaborated progressively in this chapter.
