What is Fiber Quality?

Fiber quality is a complex subject, but a very important one for those considering custom processing.  Different animals, even within the same breed, can have very different fiber in their fleeces.  Virtually all fiber types can be put to good use.  However, some fleeces are inherently more valuable than others for making a given type of product.

A wide variety of highly functional wool articles can be made from many different types of wool.  These articles range from buttery-soft, next-to-the-skin articles of clothing to  tough, long-wearing rugs.  The trick is to pair a specific lot of wool with the product that maximizes its value to you.

The tendency is for the softest yarns that can be made into touchable clothing, throws, or blankets to have the highest value in the hand crafts area.  Knitters and crocheters, especially, enjoy the positive tactile experience that soft, natural-fiber yarns offer, and tend to produce items that benefit most from that softness.  That is not to take anything away from a strong yarn from coarser wool that can make marvelous rugs, horse gear, draperies, and so forth.  Just remember to match your product to your particular fiber.

Another factor that can add perceived value to yarn is if the fiber comes from a relatively rare animal.  Yarn from a rare breed of sheep can be sold as a higher-priced novelty, even if its use would be limited to rugs or tough outer wear.  The highest value award goes to animals that are both rare and make soft yarn.

All discussions of fiber quality are relative to the expected product.  Fiber destined for yarn has different standards than fiber destined for felt, which has different standards than fiber destined for garden mulch.

More Specifics on Evaluating Fiber

There are a few guiding principles about fiber quality, from our point of view as custom yarn-makers who start with raw fiber:

• Each animal's fleece has several grades of fiber, often ranging from very high quality for specialty yarn-making to good only for industrial use.

• In general, given any lot of fiber, the lot is only slightly better than its lowest-grade component.

• Skirting and sorting increase the value of a fleece by significantly upgrading the best components and making it possible to better use the less lovely parts.  See How to Skirt a Fleece.  Since we also make felt, we can help you identify the parts of your fleeces whose highest calling is felt.

• Defects that will adversely affect the quality of yarn from a lot of fiber that we process are:

  • Excessive vegetable matter contamination.  Our machines remove a certain percentage of the incoming contaminant, but there is a level of incoming that translates into unacceptable levels in the finished yarn.

  • Guard hair.  These coarse hairs without scales do not stay wrapped in the yarn well, and so tend to shed.  Nor do they take dye well, so they can look like they don't belong.  Worst of all, guard hair adds a "prickle factor" to the yarn.  Dehairing is an processing option for your fleeces with this problem.

  • Tender fleece.  This phenomenon can occur when the animal has had a hard time while growing the fleece.  The fiber may have one or more thin spots in the length of the staple and the whole fleece will be affected.  The tips of the locks can be excessively weathered and breakable, affecting the whole fleece. The fiber on the parts of the animal that contact the ground when it is resting can be damaged.  This might only affect those parts.  Tender fibers break when they encounter our machines, becoming a contaminant that can create pills and unevenness in the yarn or becoming waste thrown out of the carder.

  • Second cuts.  A fleece sheared with electric clippers will always have some second cuts.  A good shearer's second cuts are not so numerous that the carder can't throw most of them out.  Bad shearing can chop the locks of the fleece in the middle of the staple, which causes an otherwise good fleece to process as if it were tender.  Love your shearer.  Throwing the fleece on a sorting table as it comes off the animal can drop the number of second cuts.

In the real world, there is no perfect, consistent, natural fiber.  If perfect and consistent were everything, we'd be making acrylic yarn.  It's the inconsistencies that make natural fiber interesting, unique, and valuable.  We hope this information has helped you in some way, if only to look at raw fiber in a way that helps you realize the best things it has to offer.  This information amounts to general rules, and creativity demands that there are times when rules should be broken.  We support broken rules with eyes wide open.