Fibre facts
This page explains various fibre related terms.
Links are also provided to the corresponding Wikipedia topics.
Felt
Felt is a non-woven cloth, traditionally produced from wool. It is formed when the fibre is subjected to moisture, agitation and soap. This ancient textile is enjoying new popularity. Innovations such as nuno felt (wool felted onto various fabrics to form a light and flexible fabric), and cobweb or gossamer felt, which is very light and sheer, are being explored by fibre artists.
Needle Felt
A more recent way to make felt is to use barbed needles to entangle fibres. No water is used. Also known as dry felting.
Bombyx Silk
Silk from the Bombyx Mori caterpillar (not really a worm). This is cultivated silk, white and lustrous. The caterpillars are not allowed to emerge from the cocoon (they're gassed, poor things).
Tussah Silk
Silk from wild moths. The cocoons are harvested from trees after the caterpillar has emerged as a moth. The honey colour of tussah silk is a result of the tannins in the trees. The silk varies in colour from pale to dark honey, depending on which trees the moths were feeding on.
Batt
Raw or washed fibre is placed on a carder which smooths and organizes the fibres, resulting in a flat orderly mass. When lifted off the carder the fibres are in the form of a batt, which is rectangular and puffy.
Roving
Carded fibre, drawn out into an airy rope or rove. The fibres are somewhat disorganized within the length. Rovings can be used for felting or spinning. A yarn spun from a roving with a long draw technique is called woolen spinning and results in a light airy yarn suitable for sweaters. The air trapped in this kind of spinning makes the garment very warm.
Top
The fibre is first carded, then drawn through combs which remove the short fibres, neps, and noils. The longer fibres are then aligned in a dense rope-like preparation. Tops can be used for felting and for worsted spinning. Yarn produced this way is suitable for knitted patterns where stitch definition is important, such as Aran patterns and hard wearing items like socks.
Woolen Spinning
Also known as Long Draw spinning. The spinner drafts the fibres by moving her hand/arm well back from the wheel, causing the twist to travel up the fibres until there is enough twist. The hand is then moved back to the wheel, feeding the length of newly spun yarn into the orifice of the wheel. This method traps a lot of air in the yarn.
Worsted Spinning
This is a spinning technique that uses a short draw to obtain a smooth dense yarn. Yarn produced this way from top is dense and hard wearing. The name is from the village of Worstead in England, a centre for the manufacture of yarn and cloth.
Micron Count
The fibre thickness measured in millionths of a metre (thousanths of a millimetre). A micron count of 18 is very fine and a micron count of 40 is quite coarse.
Bradford Spinning Count
This is the traditional English system for measuring the fineness of wool. (Bradford being a major woolen mill town in years gone by) The count is the number of hanks of yarn, each 560 yards in length, that it is possible to spin from one pound of clean wool. The finer the fibre the more hanks can be produced. So a spinning count of 80, often written as 80s, is very fine and 36s is coarse.